


Princess Kenny

by The_Divine_Fool



Category: South Park
Genre: Bagels, Cartman Hears Voices, Character Death, Character Study, Drama, Fluff, Gay Stuff, Gender, Humor, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mild Gore, Psychological, Skater Kenny, Supernatural Elements, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-01-28 23:46:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21400630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Divine_Fool/pseuds/The_Divine_Fool
Summary: Skateboards, skirts, and a mad baker. This is Kenny's trip through Wonderland; it all starts with a bullet.
Relationships: Eric Cartman/Kenny McCormick
Comments: 47
Kudos: 36





	1. the night kitchen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's a fun thing that's been knocking around my head a while
> 
>   


###### 

“Cartman, can you grab register, please?”

“No.”

Wendy disappeared into the walk-in fridge with the sound of an air-lock popping, then reappeared a few moments later, arms laden with cartons of liquid egg yolks. 

“Just one or two customers would really help us out,” she breezed. “We’re so short-staffed -- "

“_Sure_, Wendy -- ” Cartman interrupted her with a wet lash of sarcasm. “I’ve got two-hundred pounds of dough proofing in front of me -- a hundred more in the mixer -- but sure, let me abandon an hours-long, _time_-sensitive process to wag my tits around for the sake of _cus_tomer _ser_vice.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes to help us out. Don’t be a dick.”

“Gee, I’ve never been accused of being a dick before.”

Around them, the small cafe whirled with activity: the Night Kitchen was indeed chronically understaffed but that didn’t seem to bother the folding, serpentine line of customers out the east and west entrances. The west was exit-only but college students were _animals_ and the Night Kitchen was the only watering hole in walking distance of main campus that sold edible food at reasonable prices and actually served a decent cup of speeder to boot. 

Cartman peeled back the poly bag covering the dough in front of him and fell over his forearm to begin beating the proofy yeast bubbles out of it. The exertion clipped his breath but not his volume. Eric grew up in crowds.

“I don’t get paid to wag my tits around,” he informed her, taking his dough cutter in his left hand and continuing to speak while furiously carving a long snake from the larger corpse of dough. “My sex organs _dangle_, okay? You know what that means? It means I make _two_ more dollars on the hour than you.” 

Wendy lifted one graceful dark eyebrow and Cartman paused to wave his flour-crusted hand. “It also means when our incompetent boss comes down here and rubs his nipples and yells at _me_ for the propped doors leaking heat, and the fucking tomatoes on the floor, I stand here and _take_ it -- I'm the fucking _man_ and I take it for the team.” 

“Yes. You’re the man, Cartman.”

“That’s right Wendy. And I will continue to be the man,” he slapped a switch under his table and the former jerked to life with a huge ratcheting groan. The machine’s mass of rotating conveyer belts, weights, and blades filled the kitchen and created enough clamor that Cartman was heating up with the effort of moving the dough and shouting himself hoarse. “I will continue to be the motherfucking dude around here, Wendy, as long as _you_ continue to do _your_ job and I continue to do mine. This is the world you're living in -- I’m sorry your tits didn’t make the cut for Hooters.”

Eric lifted his dough snake to the feeding table and started to guide it into the maw of the former. The heavy blade fell like a guillotine on the first four-ounce chunk. _Clunk!_

“We’re not understaffed,” he said. “Sandman keeps hiring these fucking _Star Wars_ characters with more piercings than functioning brain cells, and he’s been playing Chinese checkers with the scheduling. My delivery guy came to pick up the Lawless order in a _bath_robe, yesterday.” 

Dough fell out of the cutter into the forming tube in steady intervals. The ass-end of the tube shat bagels onto a knee-high rotating disk. Cartman finished laying the next snake and traveled to the rear to stretch some of the tighter rings falling off the conveyer. Sometimes the gluten seized up too tight and the holes needed to be relaxed. Bagels were like women. 

Out front, no one was manning register one or register two. One (or all) of the employees on the sandwich line had taken to repeatedly hitting the panic button; it sent an alarm into the kitchen that rang loudly over the clank and _Clunk!_ of the bagel former. So Cartman shouted over that, too. 

“Look,” he continued. “I’m not more educated than you, Wendy, but I’m smart as fuck. If human civilization were advanced enough to provide a mechanism for _gain_ful, _productive_ unemployment -- then I would've already mapped out a practical guide to the perfect society and ended war and hunger forever. But since that’s not in the interest of capitalism -- here we are.” Cartman started to transfer the rings of raw dough onto wooden boards dusted with cornmeal. Five rows of five, twenty-five to each board. “My point is, the food here might be good, but this is a terrible place to be employed.”

“I understand that,” Wendy countered, dark and forceful. “Now if you’re finished spitting bullshit, get your ass on the register, or I’m telling Dre you’ve been taking donations from the Food Shelf.”

“You wouldn’t.” 

Their incompetent boss decided how_ much_ Eric got paid but it was Diamond Rae -- or Dre, or simply _Mom_ \-- who signed his checks and effectively ran the ship. She raised three daughters (and a surprise granddaughter) from the trailer park to a house and home and nobody crossed her without getting effed hard later for it; she would put him on a whole month of Fridays, probably, if she found out about the little Food Shelf thing. She’d stop stocking his muffin shelf and he’d have to go down to the dungeon first thing in the morning to grab them from the creepy body-sized freezer in the way back --

Wendy eyed him the way women eye you infernal and toxic, and she whiffed back out the swaying doors to the bustling front of the house. 

Cartman covered up the dough again, washed the crust from his hands, and brushed at the flour all over the front of his black apron to little avail -- then he got his ass on the register. 

“Whadda you want?” 

“Yes,” agreed a tall asymmetrical man for no goddamned reason. “I’ll have a breakfast sandwich, please.”

“With what?” He grit. “_On_ what?”

“Err -- what do they come on?”

Presumably, the man had walked into Cartman’s bagel shop with two eyeballs in his head, the optic nerves still attached, but had not read the sign over the door. “_Ba_gels. They come on _bagels_. It’s the Night Kitchen _Bagel_ Company -- we’ve been feeding the same thing to this gutter town for twenty years.”

“Oh,” he seemed to consider this. “So what kinds do you have?”

When the biggest pain in his ass all morning finally moved on, Cartman finished off the next twenty-five hundred customers in line. When the last stoney-baloney undergraduate finally drifted away he was just turning on his heel to go back to his dough (probably over-proofed and ruined) when another arrived. 

Eric was familiar with flamboyant types. The big gay fairy parade was in town just a few months ago and the whole campus had been popping in rainbows and mascara for it. Cartman had spent the weekend just like any other: clocked in at 12:00 a.m., baked a thousand bagels, processed hundreds of pounds of dough, and clocked out normally between 8 and 10. This sort of lifestyle suited him -- the _night_ suited him. Some people crawled under porches to die, but Eric Cartman did it to live. He hated people and he was terrible company, so he looked for jobs that let him work alone and essentially be his own boss -- mostly -- while paying off his college loans.

One thing he'd never make it as was a smiling ass-clown for the cash register. Cartman didn't last a minute on register, usually -- he'd done it to prove a point to Wendy, but it didn't change the fact that he was a bastard to talk to and only a complete, self-immolating sadist would tip him. 

When a blond dude in a stained wife beater walked in after the morning rush with a skateboard on his back and a layered pink skirt falling in many elegant ruffles over his muddy trainers, Cartman didn’t really have the blank face demeanor of a seasoned customer service professional to fall back on. 

He stood like a lump of driftwood behind the counter while the guy perused the cooler, eventually pulling on the handle and bending to pluck an orange Gatorade from the bottom row. 

He knew flamboyant types. 

But… 

This was something totally different.

There was a distinct lack of -- boyance. Nothing was being flam_boy_ed. It was just, a dude in a skirt. Cartman struggled for a label to explain this phenomenon and his bleak brainscapes came back with hiccups. He careened like a feather on stormy waters. 

“Boy, you better have somethin’ smart to say,” the customer warned. “Because you’ve been staring _way_ too long.”

It wasn’t said that _smooth_ly or anything but, because of the way his eyes were working, thumbed over the counter at him so blue -- a scattered black-and-white _blue_ like the distant Rockies on a smoggy day or the Colorado rapids with the sky overhead -- it came off as the coyest thing a guy had ever said to Cartman. 

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” he continued. “What’s your name?”

Attractive people were always so _extro_verted about names, and everything. As if Cartman was just flipping over his dick to hand out his _name_ to random men in skirts -- not a chance. Es_pecially_ not when they were paired with dirty wife beaters, beat-up teeth and towny drawls -- 

“Kenny!” 

The shout came from almost directly behind him as his coworker and childhood houseplant Stan Marsh blew past wearing the ridiculous drive-thru headgear. He tossed up his greeting while running an order back to the window. “Whaddup blood?”

The new customer responded with a generous grin and Stan’s stupid Instagram handle: “Brother _Bones!_”

His teeth were just a few whillikers short of a country corn cob, all twisted features and odd gaps, and when his eyes found Cartman again they were still sort of upward curved and smiling and _no_ one looked at Cartman like that not even his goddamn mother -- shit, most customers didn’t even make _eye_ contact with the wage slaves behind the counter. 

“Morning, Kenny,” came the sound of Wendy’s voice at his other side, along with the snap of her vinyl gloves coming off. “Single or double, today?”

“Better be a double.” He said, leaning his forearms on the counter until he could almost pass for a regular boring dude with a skateboard on his back. “I’ve got the Gentleman Kane this morning. _Three_-hour lab.”

“You have Kane this semester?” she continued to talk while fixing an espresso shot at the latte machine. “What for?”

“Thermodynamics,” he answered, hunching down over his elbows and for some, unfathomable reason, _wink_ing up at Cartman, still standing dumbly at the register and half-past oblivious to their exchange. 

“Oh, I forgot you were doing that integrated sciences thing. As long as Kane is taking his meds, he’s actually really nice.” Wendy slid a tiny paper cup like a shot glass over the counter.

“Yeah?” The peculiar customer hummed his response and started to drink immediately. He side-eyed Cartman over the rim of the paper cup. “So what’s your excuse, big guy? Forget your meds today?”

Cartman bristled back to life. “_Ffff!_ Right at the corner of _why_ don’t ya and _blow_ me.”

“So he _does_ talk -- “

“Yes, he does. A _lot_.” Wendy cut in, her glare falling steely on the side of Eric’s head. She rang up a Gatorade and a doubleshot on the second register, since he was occupying the first doing absolutely nothing. “That’s why we keep him in the back. You can _go_ now, Cartman.”

“It’s okay,” said skirt guy, and his eyes flicked over him again. “Not everyone has your customer service charm, Wends. Or your magnificent rack.”

She rolled her dark eyes. “How’d it go with Marissa, anyway?”

“Oh, not good. I don’t like telling off women, normally.”

He finished the espresso and tossed the paper cup into the bin hidden under the counter, the one for employees -- as if he _knew_ where it was, the fiend --

“But the other day she was telling me about this fantasy she had, and I finally said something.”

Wendy leaned down over the counter like the gossip whore she was. “A fantasy?”

Cartman narrowed his eyes on the pink visible below the counter. It didn’t really occur to him that he was eyeing up another dude’s ass. Nice board, too. 

“She asked me to sit on her face.”

_Whoa_-ho, and that was officially too much for Cartman to process on a Tuesday morning. 

“I just don’t wanna deal with that at work,” he was saying. “I mean, sister is banging, but -- not at work, you know?”

Wendy was nodding her understanding. Finally he packed up his Gatorade and left.

“Who was _that?_”

“What do you mean, _who?_”

“Why was he -- “

“Don’t you follow Princess Kenny on Instagram?” Stan said, appearing suddenly on his opposite side. “He’s awesome, man.”

Cartman frowned. The only account he followed on Instagram posted exclusively five-second videos of people falling. Old people, nuns, paraplegics -- really eating shit. Other than that, he didn’t follow anybody -- he was Eric T. Cartman, bitch, people followed _him_.

“I don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?”

“What was with the goddamn _skirt?_”

“Oh,” Stan said, as if he’d just asked why he was standing on two legs. “I dunno, it’s just what he does.”


	2. clyde frog

Cartman’s Wednesday night shift started off un_com_monly well. 

In retrospect, he should’ve seen it for the huge cosmic finger that it was long before the dude in the pink skirt turned up for another doubleshot and an orange Gatorade. 

Eric went off like a damn grenade three seconds before his alarm sounded and cruised through his “morning” routine with a spare five minutes to scoop Versace’s litter box so he didn't have to come home to a load of his roommate’s cat’s piss and shit. If Versace decided the box was too dirty for her glamorous gray paws, she would leave her tiny anal-retentive turds as surprises for Cartman on the doormat. 

She also had a talent for firing chunky orange vomit directly into his shoes.

Stan thought chicks would dig a dude who could take care of pussy, but after a couple of weeks dodging Versace's hooked claws and cleverly placed shit -- Cartman decided pussy was overrated. Working on an hourly wage in a college town as a post-college bachelor and recovering cynic wasn't a freakin’ carnival ride; he took his pride where he could get it, or he’d be stuck like his roommate with none at all. 

The engine rolled over on the second turn. His wipers were still doing that weird thing -- and he needed that alignment from, like, two decades ago -- but he was so used to holding the wheel at a 23-degree angle that the wilting specs on his rusty fucking bucket went completely unnoticed. When it stopped moving completely, that's when he might think something's wrong. 

The winter eased open and allowed him in. Sister moon frosted the roads, stuck in that nagging phase of _al_most full, and Cartman rolled into a limpid sky of obsidian black. His dash clock read 11:45 p.m. and he was right on track for a smooth night.

The deck oven started up on the very first punch and heaved a great guttering sigh that shook the whole shop. 

Cartman’s oven rose like a great black bristlecone pine through the ceiling, center back of the kitchen where it was just visible to customers through the swinging doors. In his mind, it had always been there, since the very beginning. Until some opportunistic Jews built the shop up around it. The Jews made a deal with the bristlecone to shield it from the axe of development -- and in return the black whale god granted them the power to create delicious bagels in its fiery womb forevermore. 

Something like that, anyway. 

When Sandman stumbled nose-first into North Park and became Cartman’s boss by purchasing the Night Kitchen from its previous owner two years ago, he wasn’t buying it for the friendly neighbors or scenic vistas. He wasn’t even buying it for the Night Kitchen -- the real prize was the huge rotating deck oven tied to its foundations. The building wasn't worth shit without it; it wasn't the business changing hands, really, it was the oven.

Each platform inside the rotating deck could accommodate three people laying down, with minimal stackage. There were altogether five platforms, so you could bake upwards of fifteen people at the same time. 

_Or thirty small children._

Cartman paused briefly in his routine. “Good point, Clyde Frog,” he said aloud. “Thirty very _bad_ small children.”

If you ever had a mind to do a thing like that, anyway. But the drippage would be nine-hundred jars of gnarly. And the smell -- _murder_. 

These were the thoughts that flit casually across Eric’s mind whilst he prepped for the morning bake.

Fringe benefits. Graveyard shift was all about the fringe benefits. One of the best things about being alone in the shop all night was you got free reign of the stereo system. Cartman linked up, cranked it up, and tested the limit on the bass to combat the lurch and roar of the deck oven. The Night Kitchen pumped so hard at night, any rumble from the RimRocks nightclub across the street got caught up in the metal fury of _Wolfmother_ and _Queens of the Stone Age_ and bullied into silence like _he_ro worship. 

_Squreeeeeak!_

Cartman heaved on the iron grate over the mouth of the oven. It rattled in its rusted tracks but slid haltingly open, fighting and screeching the whole way. Gales of hot wind gushed from the aperture, chopped into steady dragon breaths by the movement of the platforms within. Cartman lowered his heat goggles and tipped the foot pedal on his kettle to start the water boiling at his elbow. 

By the time he’d ripped his daily bake sheet off the bulletin board, scowled over Sandman’s pars for the day, and pulled his racks from the walk-in fridge, steam was building in heavy quilted layers around the overhead hood vents. He lifted the kettle’s heavy steel lid and set it aside. Shards of boiling water stung his face and arms. 

While most people in North Park were settling deep into their REM cycles or scratching imaginary bugs from their faces, Cartman aproned up, turned his hat around backwards, and started cooking.

The first sign of trouble arrived with 5:00 a.m. and the ex_pected_ arrival of the delivery guy. When 5:15 came and went and still nobody showed up to make the deliveries, Cartman’s morning leaned, wobbled, and started on a steep slide from good to weak to nut-gobbling Hell. 

Tweak was a _lousy_ delivery guy. The last _three_ guys were lousy. He didn’t understand how it could be so hard to wake up at a quarter to five and run a few bagels around the county -- it only took half an hour and the reimbursement was for mileage, which was better than _Cart_man’s on the hourly. He knew his incompetent boss had a certain nack for hiring individuals least likely to perform, but witnessing this most recent crop of college students convinced Eric the whole generation was plagued with serious performance issues.

At 5:30 a.m. Cartman dropped everything.

If Lawless didn’t get her delivery by six o'clock sharp, she would call the shop phone and bitch relentlessly about it. Cartman just wanted to get on with his morning without all that shit in his ear. So he pulled nine aluminum sheet-pans of half-cooked bacon out of the oven, threw a poly bag over the dough proofing on his table, and left fifty pounds of unmixed Hummer flour in the mixer just so he could go and do some other fuckhead’s job. And Lawless would probably chew him out when he got there, anyway.

_High-gluten harpie,_ said Clyde Frog. _Three slugs of codeine, straight to the snatch!_ Bang bang _BANG!_

“Clyde Frog,” he chuckled. “You’re an animal today.”

When he got back from the delivery route, snow in his socks and flour still on his knuckles, opening shift was coming in. 

His good morning sagged and died and Cartman trampled petals of it under his feet. His coworkers were pushing his racks around, plopping their drinks and car keys on his cutting table where the dough was proofing, discussing in earnest the developments from last night's episode of _Queerdale_, or _Pretty Little Hoes_, or whatever the fuck it was twenty-something white girls were watching nowadays. And even worse -- they unplugged his lightly floured mp3-player and changed the music to _Pan_-fucking-_dora_’s Pop and Country Hits for Homos station. Cartman wanted to _die_. He had three full batches of dough to do, still. And he had to do them all without the wailing winter winds of _Baroness_ or the crystal mazes of _Blood Mountain_. 

Who the fuck did _any_thing without the deafening accompaniment of heavy metal? 

By the time he was winding down with his last batch, it was almost _nine_ \-- Cartman hated working past seven -- and Keith Urban was whining over the speakers about a dumb chick and a sweater. 

So weak.

It was enough to drive him out the back door into a five-minute cigarette. 

The Night Kitchen was the last shop on a long strip; it had a nice long curb and a _sweet_ little drop-off into the back parking lot -- and a big sign posted that said ‘NO SKATEBOARDING’ in no uncertain terms.

The hour between the early and late morning rushes was dead quiet. Eventually he picked out the sounds of four flat wheels and a pair of squeaky trucks in the distance -- approaching, but it was hard to tell from _where_ exactly -- until the piece of shit kick-flipped over the drop and nearly smash-landed on Cartman’s toes. 

He leapt back just in time. The skateboard slammed onto the salted concrete with a resounding _clap!_ that echoed over the empty lot. Each powder-pink ruffle whispered, flooped, and gently fell back in swishing layers around the skater’s knees. Cartman glimpsed two hairy shins and a couple of respectable bruises over his NBA socks.

“Break my toes, man,” said Eric, staring glumly at his five-minute break: now rolling in the gravel leaking smoke between his feet. So weak. “And I will _have_ your ass.”

Skirt guy offered a single laugh, careless. A bit chilly, maybe. He stooped to grab his board by the nose. Then, so quiet it could've been under his breath: “What do you want with my _ass?_”

“Nothing!” Cartman growled, startled to his own defense. “But if the cops catch you doing that shit, they’ll take your pretty dress.”

“Well, thanks. But,” he slid in front of him, offered up a cigarette and another one of those filthy charming winks. Cartman took the cigarette. “They’d have to catch me first. And I’m especially agile when nude.” 

A wave of shivers ripped over him. Eric went to work dressed for the gym because he had ten hours of hot and miserable manual labor ahead of him and if anyone didn’t like the way he looked they could work the damn overnights themselves. Free dress was another fringe benefit to having a job nobody liked.

“I’m Kenny,” said the guy, the old 'you never told me your name, _asshole_' in his tone.

Cartman dragged on the cig and said nothing. He tried looking at him, too -- the way he looked at people when he wanted them to go away -- but it was like touching a hot stove; if he let his gaze linger in any one place for too long, he started to burn up. 

Kenny tipped his head to the side, unsure. Half his fucking collarbone was showing. Cartman bet he was one of those impenetrably kind people who only acted like a dick. He hated people like that.

“Um,” the skater hummed, lilting to one side.

It was one of those humongous Marlboro 100s, so the shaft was still pretty long when Kenny took it straight from Cartman's fucking mouth and dipped his head to steal a drag. Eric couldn’t really do shit but wait for it back. He wasn’t going to light another one of his _own_, damn it -- the guy owed him a butt!

_That didn’t come out right._

“Shut up!” Cartman barked. 

Kenny lifted his eyebrows. “Jeez,” he said. “No wonder they keep you in the back.”

“I keep my_self_ in the back." Eric snapped. "I work with children, dude. My staff is so inconsequential, I read them like fiction.”

“Oh,” he stole another drag. “How big is your staff?”

“Just light another fucking cigarette, why don’t you,” Eric blustered. It was so much genetically modified addicition-leaf at once that he was actually spinning on a head rush. His own little menthols didn't ever make him _dizzy_.

“That was my last one.”

Cartman said nothing, puffing like a tank engine and sweating balls in Colorado’s eternal winter. _He_ wouldn’t give his last cigarette to Oprah fucking Winfrey. 

Kenny didn’t take it again and Eric didn’t offer. He tried looking at him, again, got caught up in the frills and bruises and fell back, confused. Something drew a cold circle on the back of his hand and he whipped his head around to look -- 

But there was nothing. Kenny tipped his head again, unsure. It was too bright out. Cartman flicked the sizzling filter into an empty flower pot underneath a sign that possibly said ‘NO SMOKING’ in completely ambiguous and unreadable large capital letters -- and he darted back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
  



	3. fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i want these to be short and fast-burn  
but  
yall might remember me saying the same shit about ftp

Kenny never gave much thought to fate. He didn’t think too strenuously about _liv_ing and how it could go right or wrong for people. In his mind, the simple gorgeous fact that he _was_ alive and experiencing the world through the gaze of a five-fingered, self-propelling vessel seemed in itself a monumental destiny. It wasn't until recently he noticed -- since his parent's divorce, maybe -- he'd been living mostly in silhouette. Cut from the background and erased. Something he hadn't realized way back when he first put on the dress: shape dismantles identity.

_You won't have to do anything yet,_ his mother told him.

“You need to teach me that.”

Kenny leaned his arms over the counter and stared at a knotty spiral under the clear-coat finish until he felt himself spiralling down into the wood. He’d been awake since noon the previous day -- he could see constellations of _Gaia_ in there. “Huh?”

“I have to know what it is,” Wendy continued, her back turned, fixing his espresso while she talked. “That makes Cartman _run_ away from you with that haunted look on his face.”

“Who?” the smell of coffee was so thick and beautiful, Kenny smiled distantly. “Oh, you mean big Brown Eyes.”

“Well?”

She turned. He blinked. “Huh?”

“_What_ is it? What do you say to him?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Wends. I’m just playin’ around. Hey -- what’s his first name?”

Kenny reached for his doubleshot and in a shocking twist of terrible service Wendy withheld it from him. Her dark eyes narrowed. “Kenny, I know what you’re doing, and as your friend, I think you should stop.”

“Huh?” He kept reaching. “Wendy, you know I’ve honored and uplifted your opinion since you got plastic water bottles banned from campus -- it was such a pain dodging around them all the time -- and even though I still have questions about why _bananas_ are next on your list for eradication -- ”

“Because they’re bulldozing the _rainforests_,” she finally lowered the paper cup into his hands. 

“I don’t get it though,” said Kenny. “What’s the harm? I’m just playin’. I mean,” he murmured into his hood: “_He’scuteright?_”

“No.” she answered. “I’m well aware you have a reputation for corrupting straight boys and dragging hearts around -- ”

“Huh? Who -- me?” Kenny scoffed. “_Naw!_”

“You can deny it, but I have sources. Just trust me when I tell you it’s better to pass on this one. You should be careful.”

“_Care_ful?” Kenny blew a raspberry. “What? Is he _dan_gerous?” He could think of select sandwiches off the _Specials_ menu more dangerous at the moment than blushing Brown Eyes. 

“Well,” said Wendy, troubled. “Yes and no.” She glanced up and down the sandwich line, then over her shoulder at the swinging doors. There was a huge mechanical clamor coming from the kitchen, but no open orders or activity in the front. Kenny sipped on his doubleshot and waited for the gossip to drop anchor. 

“He's changed a lot since we were kids," she said lowly. "But, Cartman still has very extreme, um, _mood_ switches.”

He snorted. “So do I.”

“No -- it’s not just that. We -- ” she looked around again. “We’re not always sure _who_ he’s talking to.”

“Aw, come _on_, Wendy. Do you expect me to believe that? I come from a family fucking _Christ_mas tree of crazy -- the guy’s not that bad. He’s just a little, closeted, maybe.” He tossed his cup at the bin. “Someone oughta break him outta there.”

“Kenny. _Leave_ the heteros a_lone_.”

“There’s no such thing as a true hetero, not really,” he replied, unbothered. “Everybody looks.”

Wendy sighed, very soft. “You don’t understand. He could hurt you.”

Kenny smiled. “I don’t think so.” He’d made it this far in life on blind ego. In skateboarding, you try, and you fall. You get up, and you might try again and fall again a million times before getting the trick right. Maybe you never get it right. The saying goes: _skate or die._ Kenny stood apart from other skaters because he dared to try anything once; he wasn’t afraid to go hard or get hurt -- he’d always get up again and make the haters look stupid; and he’d do it all in a motherfucking dress. 

He landed some cool tricks, but Kenny was famous for eating concrete. People loved his crash-montage videos so much, he had sponsors in _Japan_. Shit, sometimes? Kenny felt fucking immortal.

“How’d it go with the video shoot?”

He groaned.

“Oh. Long night, huh?" Wendy observed. "Did it come out alright?”

Kenny wordlessly pulled his phone from his parka and brought up a video containing two and a half minutes of heavily edited footage, pared down from well over sixteen hours of organizing, fucking around, and actually filming. 

Stan skated over from the drive-thru window. “New vid?” He caught the scent of new shit like a bloodhound. 

Kenny tipped his phone screen to accommodate a second viewer. 

“Wendy -- ” The swinging doors catapulted outward. “Put an ad on Craig’s List for a new delivery guy. And a mop bucket. I fired both of them -- ” Brown Eyes paused. He put on a slow drawl like a movie character with sly tendencies: “What’ch y’all doin’?”

“Nothin’ much.” Kenny tried to catch his eye, just out of curiosity. He looked for everything Wendy warned him about, and to his surprise, he found it. He found a dull thing in the corners of his eyes like foggy diamonds -- a brittle thing. 

Stan shushed them. Wendy swung her head up. “You fired _Tweak?_”

“We’re going to need a new mop head, too.”

“You fired _Tweak?_ You idiot!”

“Don’t _wor_ry, I made sure he was still upright and semi-conscious when I sent him away. Better send a rescue team over to Old Campus tonight, though, when he tries to overdose on Tylenol again.”

“You don’t have the power to _fire_ people, Eric -- !”

“Eric,” Kenny tasted the name. He finally locked eyes with him. 

“Guys,” Stan interrupted. “_Shhh!_” 

Wendy narrowed her eyes on the overnight baker with huge throbbing promises of pain in each iris, but she settled back down over her elbows. Cartman half-stepped forward like he enjoyed the hate. “What is it?”

“Just watch!”

Three faces loomed close. Kenny hit play. 

He’d seen the shit enough times to make him sick, so he listened, and watched the audience instead. It started up with a couple of gunshots and a few bars from a local rapper Kenny had said no to. But his producer also did records and he wanted all the homies in the video -- something about a brand name. When he’d first started making videos, Kenny had nothing to his name but a jacked cell phone and his brother’s old board. Now a single shoot took him all night and twenty guys.

The skating portion opened with a rapid-fire montage of bad slams -- Kenny eating the curb, Kenny losing the rail and falling twenty feet down the side of an empty reservoir, Kenny landing back-first on top of his board -- followed by a swell of music and the _Clap!_ of him actually landing the trick. Stan howled. Wendy gave an appreciative coo. The rest of the video followed the same recipe: the shock value of copious falls and an occasional victory stirred into the pot. It ended with a few slowed-down frames of Kenny leering at the camera with blood in his teeth -- someone lit a road flare behind him. 

Kenny put his phone away. Stan whistled. He said the track was “fire” and the footage was “dope” and he would spread the video through his “channels.” Wendy congratulated him again. 

“Way too much flashy shit with the camera angles,” Cartman declared. “And that off-white _trash_ rapper can take a dive.”

“Dude, shut up!” cried Stan.

Cartman drove on like he’d been pushed. He even freed one hand from his armpit to chop it around. “And what was with that cut scene -- the dude with the baseball bat? He’s not even _hitting_ anything, I mean you can tell he’s not even hitting anything.”

“I said the same thing, man -- ” Kenny pulled at his eyes and chuckled. “We couldn’t actually break the glass in the warehouse, so he decides to just pretend. Shit looks mad weak. I _said_ it would look weak.”

The baker tucked his thumbnail between his teeth. He glanced around like he was ignoring someone. “The flamethrower was hot.”

Kenny smiled. “I wanted to have two of them, but I fucked the funds pretty raw on this one. And I lost my job at the foundry -- ”

“We,” Brown Eyes blurted. Kenny looked at him. “We, um, killed the delivery guy. I mean, he’s not dead! He’s just gone. I got rid of him -- without force!”

Kenny stifled a short peal of laughter with an abrupt cough. The guy talked like a pitbull trained out of bad habits: no sense of right and wrong and still hoping for a treat.

“Cartman,” said Wendy. “For the last time, you don't have the authority to fire people. Just because you have a penis doesn’t give you the power to pa_rade_ it around and expect everyone to get out of the way -- ”

“Oh, please, Wendy. Don’t act like you weren’t sick of cleaning up after that walking spill.”

“He wasn’t that bad! Everyone deserves -- ” 

This time it was Stan who coughed awkwardly. “He was pretty bad, Wends.”

Cartman reached into the pocket of his coat and removed a handful of keys. “I have no use for a kid who doesn’t have furniture in his apartment because he’s afraid of _heights_. If liberals didn’t have such a hard-on for embracing humanity’s rotten collectivity and assimilating every last sperm standing into this fucking system -- ”

He pulled a white cigarette from a crushed box and shook the ghost out of the damn thing waving it around for the next few sentences. “If they'd give it a rest already -- we could pull _infanticide_ back out the big bad book of ta_boos_ and end this fucking charade: you, Wendy, _you_ could be at home right now, learning how to make your cunt look slightly more appealing than everyone else’s; Stan could get along with saving up to buy you from your parents; and I wouldn’t be tripping over bathrobes and flying _skirts_ at work!”

The bell over the east entrance jangled. A cloud slid over the sun. Kenny was joined at the counter by a woman holding a very small human in the crook of her arm. She shrugged it upright. The child shifted noiselessly; it was caught in the malleable stages between infancy and babbling babyhood that were neither liquid nor solid completely. Despite this uncertainty of form, its eyes were clear black suns and the spare brown fluff on its crown was already ripping right along toward honorable afro-hood. Kenny averted his eyes politely but the child beheld him, godlike, unconcerned.

She arrived with a hand immediately on Kenny’s shoulder: “Hey, gang.” She considered him up and down. “Hello. Aren’t you… fabulous. You ordering?”

“Er -- no!” He shuffled out of the way. “Go ahead.”

She withdrew her hand to screen a fake falsetto laugh. “Oh, no, honey. I run this place,” she gestured to the employees behind the counter; they lingered in various states of military attention. “And these are my walking aprons. Wendy, hello.”

Wendy opened her mouth. She’d uttered half a greeting when the woman interrupted her in a honeyed tone: “Say hi to Wendy, baby!” She grasped the child’s arm in her free hand and manipulated its small paw in a wave. Wendy appeared stricken into silence. 

“Stanley, that’s a _funny_ hat you’re wearing,” she continued, in the same saccharine voice. “What’s it for?”

Stan lifted his hand. His fingertips just brushed the microphone on his headgear; he jumped like he’d been shocked. “Yes, ma’am! Message received.” He trotted back to the order window with a fire lit under his ass. Wendy followed his lead and retreated to the back of the house with a mumble about some dishes. 

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh,” she said, even-toned, and finally considered her last employee standing. “It’s third shift. Say hello to third shift, Baby.”

The tiny person in her arm barely moved. Kenny wanted to bail but he wanted a job even more.

Cartman nodded at her chest. He was still gesturing with the cigarette and that bothered Kenny, for some reason -- an unlit cigarette in a closed room. Like a television screen with the power turned off. “What’s its name?”

“Do you care?”

“No.” His mouth leaned sideways, though. 

“Go on,” she said, with a breeze of her free hand. “What’s Clyde Frog have to say?”

Kenny’s thoughts jammed. He stared at her like she’d grown a second rack on her head. Clyde _who?_

“Clyde Frog loves chocolate babies,” Cartman said immediately, like an opened levy. He chewed his lip. Then: “He says you’re better off not naming the boys until they get out of jail at thirty-five.”

“Oh?” She spoke to the baby in her arm. “What about Fear?” She tapped its tiny cinnamon nose. “What’s Fear have to say?”

“I’m clocked out,” Cartman informed her. “So you can’t bully me.”

Kenny was so confused he didn’t even really process the words. Like watching a newscast in a different language, waiting for an advertisement to cut in. 

“What does fear say?” She asked again. “Say hello to Fear, baby.” The small hand waved again.

“Fear doesn’t say anything!” Cartman snapped and shrugged his coat around him. He glanced up and down the sandwich line. Then: “Fear is quiet.”

The woman lifted a partition in the counter with one hand and crossed over the line to stand beside her employee. The partition flipped closed behind her. She leaned up and said something into his ear, then -- too quietly for Kenny to hear. Cartman furrowed his brow at a spot on the counter. 

“I have something for you,” she sang, drawing away to rummage one hand in her purse. She extracted a long white paper envelope and extended it to him with a flourish. “Here you go, baby.”

Cartman took his paycheck in both hands. He stared at it with childish wonder. “Thank you.” 

“Mm. It’s not good till tomorrow.” She started to move through the swinging doors. Over her shoulder: “Don’t throw it all at RimRocks.”

She smiled at Kenny. The baby peered at him, still, and as one they disappeared into the back. Cartman looked after his supervisor. His gaze dragged. 

“You like her,” Kenny accused, more to confirm it to himself than anything.

“Are you kidding?" He snorted viciously. "I _love_ that woman. Have you seen the car she’s driving?”

“Um, no?”

“Man, I’d love to pop her trunk.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. _Heteros_.

“Hey,” said Cartman, picking up the partition and crossing into the public zone. He gestured at Kenny’s parka. “Take out your black rectangle.” 

Kenny still had his phone handy. His video was up on the last frame. Cartman inserted himself into his space and dragged his middle finger along the bar until he’d backed up the footage to around the one-minute mark. Then he hit play. 

Kenny felt the heat off his shoulder -- he smelled sweat, petrol, and breath like a dead cigarette.

“There,” said Cartman, pausing the clip.

“Huh?” Kenny blinked.

“Right here is where you die.”

_Huh?_

“It’s quick -- ” he hummed, gesturing around the freeze-frame. Kenny half-heartedly composed whole shameful fantasies about his fingers. “But you should think about editing out the part where you break your fucking neck. Or else people might find out you’re immortal.”

Kenny hauled the conversation and his wandering thoughts to a halt. “Wait a minute, dude. No. You got it all wrong -- ”

“Do I?” He challenged, unrelenting. “Look, little girl. Unless you have a tragically deceased identical twin who features in this video -- you are. Fucking. Immortal.”

“W-what?”

Brown Eyes loomed close, suddenly. It didn’t feel very sexy and it wasn’t on his mind but Kenny imagined he was close enough to kiss. The illusion shattered: “Do you grant wishes, too?”

“I’m not a god-damn _fairy!_” Kenny shoved him away. He processed the truth: “You’re nuts!”

“Mm.” Cartman leaned away. He tucked the cigarette into the corner of his mouth. “Say what you want. But I’m onto you, Princess. And if you want this job, you’ll show up right here at four o’clock tomorrow morning."

He turned before reaching the west exit. "Wear something a little less -- ” he waved his fucking hand. “Fabulous.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ftp is underway, as is _cursed eye_ \--  
when i said 'in time for nanowrimo' what i really meant was the nanowrimo inside my head that runs perpetually month into month into month --
> 
> thanks for reading
> 
> more art and tunes up next.


	4. the downs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied about the tunes. next time. have some art -- this is a long one.

Kenny woke up at a quarter to 4 a.m. deep in the amniotic dark of a Friday morning.

He dressed, finished his mom’s beer, spit in the neighbor’s hedgerow. He slunk like a thing hypnotized into his driver’s seat. The engine lumped over and his little single-hitter rattled in the dash, packed with dope for the road -- but it was so early Kenny never fully warmed to the idea of smoking. 

In the minutes just following a jaw-cracking gaper of a yawn, he arrived on the scene of the Night Kitchen. The pale mists of a late gloaming lurked behind him. It would be a come-and-get-it sort of day, Kenny decided. He had no idea what lay before him would be the strangest and most horrifying morning of his life. 

“You can call me Cartman,” said the baker, pushing a cigarette into one of the sign-side flower pots. The only light in ten blocks was the little knob glowing over the door. “Everyone else does.”

_Fuck you,_ Kenny thought, pushing his keys into his pocket. 

“I didn’t expect you till five. I never expect anyone your age until an _hour_ past, usually.”

Kenny had decided he _was_n’t crazy. He gave Wendy a call, yesterday, and he decided Cartman wasn’t crazy, just a little, off. Those offhand racist conversations with his supervisor happened all the time, apparently. And he was probably just messing around, with that, _im_mor_tality_ crap. Taking the piss, you know? Kenny did stuff like that to mess with strangers all the time -- 

“You even remembered to bring shoes. And at least one brain cell, that I can see. You must be used to early mornings. Or, you just really need the fucking buck.”

He seemed to be waiting for a response this time so Kenny lifted his hand and simulated a quippy comeback with a duck-billed _gab-gab_ gesture.

The baker wasn’t deterred. “Not a talker, huh. Too early? I get it.” He turned into the shop. 

Kenny yawned again and scuffed forward -- spat in the flower pot, and followed him inside. He knew he was acting like a douchebag to the guy who sort of got him a job but he still hadn’t forgiven him for scaring the bejeezus out of him, before. 

Cartman lifted the partition in the counter and stepped aside to let him pass. At a certain point, Kenny had to inch sideways to get past the guy’s baby-gut, and he stopped to narrow his eyes on the piece of shit. 

He had eyes like acorns. A ruckuss of brown with a bit of russet red on the bell-curve. 

He couldn’t hate him, Kenny decided, and sidled past. Cartman was just a boy, in his eyes. _Never ruckuss around with boys_, his mother told him. But Kenny found men, too, were mostly unknown to themselves. 

“Didn’t I tell you,” said Cartman. “To tone down the fabulous?”

Kenny bared his teeth. “I thought ya meant the skirt!”

“I did, but -- ” His eyebrows burrowed, worried. “You’re still pulling it off, somehow.”

“Can we _skip_ the part where you have a hernia over my outfit?”

“No, see, that’s the problem.” He made partitions with both hands: “_Girls_ wear outfits,” on the right, and on the left: “_Men_ wear clothes.”

Kenny tossed his head. “Whatever, man.” He worked one hand under his shirt and pushed his fingertips under the band of his shorts. 

“The 8th Layer? That’s expensive shit!”

“No kidding?” Kenny hummed. “They sponsor me -- I get everything for free.” He shoved past the baker and took one extra step through the swinging doors to the back of the house, stopped in his tracks when a wave of heat slammed into him. The gate over the oven was open a crack, and it felt as hot as the forges at the foundry. Kenny lifted his forearm over his brow. Hood fans roared overhead, and a gigantic tub of boiling water was spitting at his elbow -- 

“This way, Princess.”

Normally Kenny might have an issue with being manhandled, if it wasn’t for the fact he was being led toward a darker, cooler corner of the kitchens. 

“This is Sandman’s desk.” said Cartman. “Disgusting, isn’t it?”

There was an empty tube of tennis balls sticking out of the bin -- a pogo stick in the corner. Kenny counted seven bags of half-eaten potato chips. 

Cartman ripped a sheet of paper off a bulletin board presiding over the corner “office” and offered it to Kenny. “These are your numbers. It’s Friday so you have three deliveries to make: Raven’s Croft, the bodega, and Lawless. Do I need to explain how to read the list?”

There was a row for each bagel flavor, a column for the day of the week, and a table for each location. “_No_.”

He put his hands up. “Okay, okay. Not for nothin’ but, I never worked around anybody with a _second_ brain cell, before.”

Kenny sneered again, snatched the list and shuffled back out the swinging doors. Cartman followed him. 

“I finished the bake early,” he explained. “Check it out -- twelve-hundred bagels, dude. You ever seen anything so beautiful?” He gestured to the bottom row of baskets. “These are the Smellies. Garlic, Salt, Onion, Everything. Always bag the smellies separate, or with each other. Don’t put Cinnamon Sugar with Asiago cheese, _obviously_. And don’t put _any_thing together with Poppy seed -- make sense? Bagels have rules just like people, dog. Make sense?”

Kenny didn’t think it was rocket science. He bagged the orders in ten minutes, glancing back at his list. Cartman leaned against the sandwich bar. Occasionally he snatched bagels back out the bags, saying cryptic things like: “That’s a softball. Don’t pull softballs for Lawless. Trust me.”

He ended up with two three-dozen bags for each stop. Kenny took two in his elbows and headed for the front door -- Cartman took the remaining four. 

“I’ll show you where everything is the first time,” he explained. “Then you’re on your own.”

Kenny grunted. He wasn’t sure why he was being so nice but he had a hidden buried-down hunch that it had to do with the nuthead’s three-fairy-_wishes_ theory. 

“Is this _yours?_” He almost changed his mind when Cartman promptly lost his shit over Kenny’s car. “Fuck me up!”

“Yes,” Kenny yawned, stowing the bags in the back seat. He had to shift his skirt to the handle over the opposite door. He turned and loaded Cartman’s bags one by one.

“It’s so _shi_ny!”

Kenny chuckled finally. He circled around to the driver’s seat, shrugging sleep off his shoulders. “It’s a fucking Jeep, dude.”

“It’s fucking sly,” Cartman gushed, clmbing up the passenger side. “Fucking sly as shit -- you rolled my dream car right out of _Call of Duty_.”

“_Naw_,” Kenny laughed. “I spent like five minutes at the dealership.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh!” The engine churned and purred. “These polo shirts talking to me about financing, bro. I said ‘Fuck your financing. Take my fucking money.’”

Cartman giggled over his knees. "No _way._" When he settled he had a cigarette in his grin again and its twin outstretched to him. Kenny eyed the offering suspiciously for a moment, but he’d warmed up since leaving the house and decided to give Brown Eyes another chance. 

“What’s with the brand names, for real?”

Kenny shrugged. “I grew up poor.” He cracked his window and blew out a bunch of smoke he only half-tasted. He just liked the way it looked going out the window, really. “So, I guess, as soon as I have money I throw it. On stuff I like, mostly. I like to look good. I don’t see anything wrong with a guy wanting to look good.”

Cartman hummed. After three turns and a steep mudslide into downtown, he directed Kenny into the ramshackle staff parking lot outside a spooky-looking inn. Raven’s Croft grew out of the pavement like an assemblage or a hoard: grown with the patient touch of time and a habit for collecting dark things. It sat brushing elbows with an abandoned mill on one side and the noise of a four-way city intersection on the other.

Kenny's perpetual companion sunk his shoes into the slush at his side. His very own chain-smoking ghost of Christmas freaking Future. 

“See that bridge?” He said. “That covered bridge is one of the most haunted places in the Midwest.”

Kenny shrugged the two bags of bagels close to his chest. They were warm. He started off at a swift stride.

“A hundred and sixty-two suicides,” said the bastard, trotting along after him. “All off the pier, there. People come from all over to check it out -- take pictures, stay at the inn. They say some people crossing that bridge, you know, they just can’t help themselves. The spirit takes ‘em, and they dive head-first into the Platte.”

Kenny grunted. He had the door to the inn in his cross-hairs. The main entrance was on the side, under an old-timey awning and two floors of bowed windows. Small branches and things crawled over the side-paths. The building was closely shuttered and grinning with dirt. 

“Are you a spirit? I mean, do you feel like you might be a spirit, possessing a body?”

“Huh? What?” Kenny sniffed against the chill and stomped up the steps. “Can we do this without the extras?” 

He waited for him to get the door, but he didn’t. Kenny expected a grandiose _This way, Princess_ and a chivalrous pat on the butt or some other cute little rude shit, but Cartman stuck his hands in his pockets and lingered down in the hairlogged side-paths. 

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“Um, no,” he glanced at the signboard over the door, smiled shakily and ducked back over his cigarette. “Place gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Where do I put these?”

“Just ask somebody.” Cartman nodded at his feet. “Go downstairs. Um. Don’t look at the crimson blind.”

Kenny struggled inside the door. Tried to scuff the salt off his new Octanes. They weren’t his _most_ expensive pair of shoes but they were cozy and strappy and pretty much crystal white until a minute ago. 

“Yo.” He greeted the mook behind the front desk -- a washed-out gentleman-type who appeared genuinely shocked that anybody found the place, let alone managed to wiggle in the doors, too. 

“Where do you want, uh, your bagels?”

The man made an '_Oh,_' expression and pointed. Kenny saw a stairwell leading only down. “Oh,” he said. “Thanks.”

Kenny hit the stairs like they owed him money and trotted off the landing to slow his momentum. He wondered if he’d stumbled on an indoor funeral with no attendees. But no -- that was an abandoned buffet table at the back, not a casket, and a mourning crowd of upturned chairs. In the far corner of the unlit dining room, Kenny saw a light.

There was a girl opening the bar in the dark. He asked her about a delivery. 

“The table,” she said. “They like ‘em on the table in the back.”

It was the most detail he’d received all morning, so Kenny ran with it. 

The light came from the kitchen. He took a tentative step around a corner, heard the noise of a violent washing-up and an alarm going off, and stepped back. He could leave them here, he supposed. There were only about a hundred tables -- _which_ one? 

Kenny looked around. There was a shoot off the dining room, a dead-end hallway occupied by a tower of boxes and a counter loaded with six gurgling coffee tankards, and then his eye caught on it. At the end of the chute was a window covered by a red blind. 

_Shriii-ik!_ “You found the spot.”

A cardboard box warped and seemed to explode outward. A wire-haired guy sat on a crate under the window, deep in shadow. 

“Uh,” said Kenny. 

“This is the spot, right here.” He said, brandishing a pocket-knife with a fat blade. He threw the flattened cardboard shell under his feet and reached for another box, ending its foray into the third dimension in a few thick swipes. _Shriik! Shriik! Shriiii-ik!_

“Hey, man,” Kenny worded his appeal carefully. “D’you know where I should leave these?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m -- ” _Shriik!_ “I’m with the Night Kitchen. I got bagels to deliver.”

The guy started to stand and in an instant Kenny glimpsed a pale figure move from wall to wall across the narrow hallway. He gave a little jump, clutched at his bagels.

“Did you see that?” 

“What?”

The boxcutter guy cut a lankier figure than Kenny expected, stenciled against the red screen. He walked closer, leaning and lurching over the mess of box corpses. Steel glinted in his left hand. 

“You don’t _look_ like you’re from the Night Kitchen,” he said. Wicked knuckles drew bold lines up his hands. His skin was all the same yellow-gray. Probably troubling through his twenties somewhere, like Cartman -- but the man had a look like someone who’d gone a couple of life’s milestones too soon. The death of an old friend, or love dried out. Someone who issued an early refusal to a fall-down future.

“You’re deaf, and you’re blind, too?” He growled at him. “The _table_, boy. Put the shit down on the table, there.”

He prowled past him and Kenny flinched away from his violet eyes. “They never last -- will you? Longer than the _other_ jumpy blond.”

Kenny followed him around the corner onto the threshold of the kitchen. Shouting could be heard inside. He heard a report like a gun going off, and tried not to jump again. Kenny was from South Park -- he knew a _pistol_ when he heard one -- 

“I hate beautiful things,” muttered the wire-haired boy.

“The left-aside table.” He gestured to a wooden board already laden with pastries in clear bags -- jam-filled danishes, hand-rolled croissants, donuts and tiny pies -- Kenny swallowed his little bit of ashy spit. The boxcutter dude promptly ripped open one of the bags, tore a long meaty flank off an innocent danish, and ate the raspberry jam out the center. He pitched the rest directly into the trash. 

“They only leave left-asides for staff,” he muttered. “Left-asides for left-asides!”

Kenny hugged Cartman’s bagels to him. “Are you sure, this is… ?”

“Leave them there.” He demanded. He was ripping holes across the other bags, barely nibbling at things before throwing them out. “The line cooks will get them. And then, tomorrow morning -- " He whispered it like a threat: "_I’ll_ get the left-asides.”

Kenny left Raven’s Croft Inn so quick he tossed a ‘Nice day!’ over his shoulder before seeing that the haggard gentleman at the front desk had gone. 

He hauled his Jeep into drive and threw on the ass-heater, too, to try and shake the cold.

“Did you look?” Cartman chewed his thumbnail. “Did you look at the blind?”

Kenny fumbled his half-spent cigarette out of the tray and relit the sucker. “That shit will haunt me, the rest of my life.”

He giggled. “So it’s not just me.”

“Who was that _smar_my fucking dude?”

“Oh. That’s Rainer. He’s always there.” He stuttered a laugh into his collar, like someone had whispered something to him. “That’s right -- except on full moons, he’s not.”

“Do you _know_ him?”

He shrugged his coat up. “Wish I didn’t.”

The next stop was the bodega. Comparatively painless. Kenny tiptoed in through the lighted side-entrance, arranged his bags on the counter under the Bakery window, and lingered just long enough to deliver Cartman the latest gossip: so-and-so was shifted to a secondary location; nobody thought it had to do with the _Gianna_ incident, but they all admitted the new position amounted to an honorable discharge in food service politics. And then there was that mysterious pregnancy over in Produce; Gianna’s hunky cousin _Anton_ just got out of corrections a month ago and it _can’t_ just be a coincidence -- 

“Okay,” Kenny sighed from the pilot’s chair. “What’s next?”

“Lawless,” Cartman said, small and curtailing. Kenny could tell he wasn’t pleased with the idea. “She’s all the way in South Park. Let’s take the downs.”

“Okay.” Kenny liked driving over the downs. It was a long stretch of wide windswept fields between North and South Park, barren and weedy in the fallow period, grazing land in the nicer months. Kenny remembered laying down out there in the summertime among the low-shouldered hills and gently snorting cows. He used to daydream for hours listening to skylark song under the pale sky.

It was a quarter to 5 a.m. and if you looked a certain direction over the downs, you might see the darkness fading. Black trees emerged in dotted lines over the fields. Route 100 through Park County was abandoned in the pearly hours and with cruise control engaged Kenny could drive with his legs up. He messed around with the stereo a little. Smoked his single-hitter. 

“Dude,” Cartman sighed like he was giving up the ghost on something. “What’s with the skirt?”

Kenny glanced in the back, reached behind him and straightened some of the frills out. “Oh, I’m skating later today, so. You know. I gotta hang it so the layers don’t get messed up.”

This answer only bothered him more. “No, I just… don’t _get_ it. You’re not gay. I mean, ya don’t look gay.”

Kenny barked a laugh. This motherfucker thought he knew him after shit over an _hour_ \-- 

“The fuck does a gay person _look_ like?”

“I -- ”

“You know what, man,” Kenny interrupted him with his own flying hand. “I just realized, I don’t give one fuck, two fucks, red fuck-_blue_ fuck what you think! I wish you'd lay off me for one second and look in the fucking mirror!" 

“All I meant was,” he spoke in measured bursts at the dashboard. “You do gay stuff sometimes, but I feel like you’re only doing it to fuck with people; I've seen your IG, like, girls lose their shit over you too. But I get the feeling you’re taking the piss, somehow. Maybe the dress is satire? Does it have another meaning?”

“Satire?” Kenny was half-surprised out of his rage. “How about, _no_, man. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just, something I like to do.”

Cartman chewed his thumbnail. “It’s gotta mean something. Poor ghetto kid from South Park playing at _prin_cess dresses -- ” He looked up suddenly. “I get it now. It’s 'cause you’re immortal.”

Kenny almost slapped a palm over his brow. “Um. No. Dude -- ”

“Think about it! You can’t partake in mortal pleasures, so you’ve imagined an impossible role for yourself to match up with unattainable relationship goals. Wendy told me about your reputation and it all makes sense -- ”

“No, listen.” Jesus H Christ, was he _on_ to something? “I just have a hard time settling down with anyone for a long time. As soon as they say they love me -- I’m bored, I’ve gotta move on. I don’t know what it is, dog.” 

“Howell,” he said.

“Huh?”

“_Howl_. That’s -- that’s literally the whole premise behind the book, _Howl’s Moving Castle_. The Wizard Howl is a renowned playboy but he only pursues women long enough for them to fall in love -- once they say it, it’s over. He moves on.”

“Mm,” Kenny considered it. “Haven’t you ever felt like that?”

“No. I’ve never been in love.”

“Why not?”

“Whuh? What do you mean -- ” he started blustering, poor thing. “Why _not?_ It’s not _my_ fault, it just hasn’t happened yet -- ”

“I don’t think so,” Kenny said, smiling. “That's not how it works. Love takes kindling.”

“Am I -- “ Cartman glanced down at his toes, then up. “Am I too wet?”

Kenny laughed. 

They growled into the dirt lot outside a smallish standalone sandwich joint painted an ostensible pink. Cartman twitched and touched the dial on the AC with no apparent aim. Kenny could tell it wasn’t his scene, but he tried anyway just to test the waters.

“Will you come in with me this time? Just this once,” he said. “Please, Eric?”

To Kenny’s surprise, he did. He jumped out the passenger seat like his freaking com_mand_ protocol had been triggered -- and when Kenny muffed at the door to the back entrance he hustled around and opened it for him like his own personal _bagel_ knight. He didn’t care if Cartman was only being nice because he was a little nuts and thought Kenny was a god -- that was all fucking fine with him. He didn’t care _why_ people liked him. It only mattered that they did.

“Just shove the bagels on the rods.” He said inside the door. “Shorty-fat over there will look at you, but she’s completely deaf. The bitch couldn’t hear you screaming.”

“_What_ did you just say?”

Cartman swung his head up. “I said don’t stick a blistered pussy.”

“Oh,” said a second woman. “It’s you again.”

“Morning, Deborah,” he said, equally cold. “A pleasure as always.”

She was a severe-looking but plumpish woman in her mid-40s, Kenny guessed. A little older than his mom. Her hair was dyed bone-blonde but her eyes looked sharp and black, set deeply in an expression he could only describe as childqueen, politely startled. 

While Cartman entertained the woman -- Deborah Lawless, Kenny presumed, proprietor of Deb’s Sandwich Bar and Café -- whom he’d reviled so loudly and incessantly on the car ride over, Kenny stumped in the direction he’d been pointed in, and set his bags on a cutting counter near a stout woman with a heroic bug-eye. She was steady chopping away at bunches of bleeding green scallions, under a hair-net beehived over a huge cuckoo’s-nest of dark auburn hair. Kenny thought she oughta be driving a bus somewhere. 

It was a homely kitchen, both prep and production areas in one, not even half the size of the back of the bagel house -- but the difference could be explained mostly by Cartman’s oven. The more shit you spit, the bigger you need to be, Kenny thought. To contain it all.

Only a pinch of clean light streamed in through a long horizontal order window; the rest of the shop was shaded some hue of pink. The air thickened with it. Kenny ignored the vulval interior and surveyed the wall of jutting rods before him. Each wooden dowel bore a label designating it for a certain flavor of bagel. Some of them were obvious; the dowel labelled ‘POPPY’ still had black seeds scattered up and down the shaft. 

Kenny bit his lip. He knew what he had to do, but --

_Why?_ He kept asking himself. Why did everything have to be like this?

Surrounded by the rusty pink glow of Lawless’s sandwich stop, Kenny unbagged his delivery and one-by-one impaled each bagel on its respective rod. Some were wide-ringed and slid down painlessly, but others were doughier or their holes had closed up, and Kenny had to carefully align the dowel-tips, penetrate, and blunt-force them down. 

And all the while, the woman with the bug-eye watched. Chopping the heads off scallions -- _Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!_ \-- and shredding the green tails. _Shhck! Shhck! Shhhhhck!_ The knife was juicy green and dripping. 

Kenny finally folded the empty paper bags under his arm, feeling white and cold.

“I hope you have a swell afternoon,” said Cartman, doffing his snapback at the Lawless woman like it was a feathered cap. “Selling my buns to pay your rent.”

“Your buns couldn’t pay my rent if they worked the block every night." She responded, frigid. "You’ve never made a sandwich in your life, fat-head! Prepared food takes time, love and _nur_turing!”

“So does raw material!” Cartman was jabbing at her with two fingers, red-faced and two seconds from grabbing his nuts. Lawless eyed him across a couple cutting counters, bone-blonde and severe as all hell; Kenny thought she could probably throw an unfellowing elbow or two.

He edged for the door. The shouting was going to bring the house down. He felt like he was seven years old again, inching away from the events that led to his parents’ abrupt divorce. Moving to North Park with his mom and his sister, losing his narrative, and skating his life away.

“Shove it up your ass!”

“Up yours! Leaky cunt!”

Cartman lifted the door open a crack. Kenny dodged around him and out. He couldn’t wait to put distance on the pink shop. 

They were peeling out of the township back to North Park and he was still ranting about it.

“ -- We should quarantine women to _Alaska_, and put them in a _ca_talogue system, and if you want a joyride you can finance a joyride, and if you want an absolute, fucking, _cunt_ you can rent Lawless and _beat_ her -- ”

“Hey,” Kenny flashed a stop signal with his hand. “Alright, man. We get it. Ease up on women, okay? I love my mom. She raised me out the gutter.”

They didn’t talk about it more and that was fine with Kenny. He wheeled down the windows some and let the foggy dawn creep in. The sun was rising over the downs. A faint purple haze settled over the knee-high weeds and grasses, ushering the thin winter chill down to the soil. It already sort of felt like the end of a very long day. Kenny still had classes ahead of him -- another three-hour lecture series, and a video shoot later. His stomach groaned. 

Cartman dug his board out of the backseat. He shot Kenny in the heart with an appreciative half-grin. “Iridescent trucks,” he chuckled. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“You skate?”

“Used to. I’m too fucking big, now.” He traced the styling under the board. “Is this a custom deck? What’s _Mysterion?_”

“Just some old kid shit. It’s custom; that one’s probably _Mysterion_ mark nine-_hun_dred.”

“Yeah, I bet you’ve killed a lot of boards.” He shifted in his seat and jerked his phone from his back pocket. “Prob’ly broke a board for every time you died.”

“C’mon,” Kenny _tsk_ed. “Not with this again. I was just about to give you a third second-chance.”

“Just hear me out -- what does this look like to you?”

“It _looks_ like you Instagram-stalked the shit out of me yesterday.”

“But look at the _vid_eo, man.” He insisted. “D’you remember this? That fumble off the bridge. You got cracked in half over the bed of this logging truck, dude -- you were _out_. There was a guy shaking you on the pavement!”

“Yeah, but I got up. I always get up after.”

“That’s not the point,” he settled back in his seat and waved Kenny away like he was another travelling idiot asking for spare change. “I showed Stan some of these, and he says the same shit.”

“So, then,” Kenny said, gently, because he knew you weren’t supposed to jar deranged people out of their delusions. “_What’s_ the problem?”

“My _pro_blem is," he erupted anyway. "If I sent this clip to Web M.D., they’d mail it back to me with, fucking, _flowers for my loss!_”

“Whatever, man.” Kenny touched the volume on his stereo. He entertained a scenario with Cartman bringing him flowers and nearly spat up a laugh when he noticed something else that freaked him the fuck out. 

“What the hell is _that!_”

His passenger tucked his thumbnail between his teeth. His spare hand twitched. “What?”

“The gun! What’ve you got a _gun_ for?”

Kenny saw the spare hand tense around its shiny black accompaniment and he quickly buttoned his lip. 

“This… ” Cartman stared at his lap. “This is Fear.”


	5. the downs ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go!  
sorry about all the formatting~  
i'm not usually so aggressive with the html. 
> 
> one day i'll invent a device to broadcast ideas directly into ur brains.  
ill call it transneural boobyvision and die fulfilled and coming hard
> 
> pls enjoy~

[PK ch. 5](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/pk-ch-5?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

“Dude! Do you have a permit!”

“A permit for what!” Cartman barked. “I can do whatever I want -- I was in a fucking war!”

“_What_ war?”

“The war that’s growing up in the _Bot_tom!” He insisted. “_Fuck!_”

“Man _put_ that shit away!” The driver was going hoarse. “I grew up in South Park, too!”

Cartman put his hand down. He looked out the window over the downs and let his thoughts spread-eagle in the familiar, desolate calm. “_No_ you fucking didn’t." He said. "I’d remember you.” 

Kenny chuckled. His voice had disappeared down a ragged hole but he was taking it in stride, and making light of it. “I don’t know, man. I was a little different. Quiet kid. We moved to North Park when I was in second grade.”

“What’s your last name?”

“It was McCormick.”

“McCormick… I remember. I thought that kid got beat up and left in a ditch a long time ago.”

“More than one beating. More than one ditch.” 

Cartman thought about it. “Some people don’t like beautiful things.”

“Erm,” the skater shifted. Nobody should be able to get away with _that_ much orange at one time. “Thank you?”

The truth was fucking obvious. Kenny stuck out because he didn’t be_long_ \-- an immortal being contained in mortal form, unknown even to itself -- it was _sad_. Eric thought it was just sad. 

_How victorious it will look, mounted over the hearth,_ said Clyde Frog. _A pair of marbles for eyes!_

Brighteyes...Fear whispered. ...two bright eyes...

Kenny looked at him. Cartman ducked his head.

“I don’t think you should be carrying a gun, dude. The way you are.”

“The way, I am?”

“Yeah,” Kenny was all but white-knuckling the steering wheel, but Cartman could feel the car slowing down. “You know.”

“What? Are you saying -- ” He processed aloud. “You think I’m delusional?”

“No,” Kenny swallowed heavily. “But, my mom says, some people just have the devil in them.”

too... bright... two... 

Kenny glanced at him again. _Crack!_ There was a sound like a gun going off. Cartman fell against the door, his ears ringing. Kenny pumped the handle and stumbled out onto the road, leaving a smear of blood behind. Shame about the interior. Cartman saw a silhouette on the downs and set off in pursuit. He couldn't be moving very fast. Not at that awkward, hopping gait. 

_Skeet skeet skeet!_ Clyde Frog was singing. _Knock-him off her-feet!_

The sun was just arcing over the hills, puffy-eyed peering at them from behind a patchwork of clouds. Water was running somewhere nearby and the dawn chorus started to twitter overhead. He could smell early winter clamping down, musty wet and ruggish on the tongue.

Cartman cleared his throat before calling out. “Kenny? Don’t be scared, man. You should know. You really oughta know.”

He thought he heard the windtorn echo of a _Fuck you!_ between the swishing grasses. He broke into a run, edged around some long grabs of spiny sedge, and closed the distance. 

“Asshole!” Kenny snarled at him, but his eyes were wide. Blue, with tiny floes of green. He held one hand clamped to the outside of his leg. 

“You’re not healing.”

“No _shit_, spark-_plug!_ I’m a fucking human being!”

Cartman tucked his thumbnail between his teeth. Spare hand tapped coldly at his leg. 

“The bruises,” he said finally. “You didn’t heal your bruises either.”

“_Huh?_” Kenny clearly couldn’t totter any further. A nearby creek rustled behind a thin screen of reeds. He could taste it in the air. Cartman remembered that creek. He remembered playing all over the downs as a kid, tramping in the mud, climbing the scrubby marsh trees -- catching crayfish in his bare hands and letting them go. He liked finding the dead ones best. He used to line up the exoskeletons on his desk, all empty eyes and clicky little claws. His mother hated it. Well, his mother never felt anything around him. That's how he knew when she really hated something: she wouldn't acknowledge it.

“It must take a kill-shot,” said Cartman, thinking, tapping. “To reset you.”

“No, dude, _no!_” Kenny went from hoarse to ripping and tearing in the throat. “That’s not right. Come on, look at me -- Eric!”

Cartman swung his head up. 

too... it’s too... BRIGHT.

The sound again. _Crack!_ Cartman lifted both hands to his ears to stop the ringing, and a gun thudded to the ground at his feet. He stared at it. 

The new delivery guy was lying in the dirt with a hole in his head. Blood slithered shoreward a few inches at a time. It stirred up the thin topsoil, churning red to buttery brown. In a few days the late autumn would swell with turfgrass and cool-blooming bulbs -- light snacking for passing deer and elk -- and when the ground froze over, everything would wither and look dead. But really, life sank into the soil. It would all rise and bloom again come spring. And before you know it, the deer come through again, to decapitate the prettiest buds.

Cartman watched the progress of the dark pool and he wondered if it was a crime, somewhere, for a mortal to witness the spillover nectar of immortality.

His eye caught on a dark shape on the ground next to the body and he stooped to pick it up. 

It was Kenny’s black rectangle. Smeared with crimson like he’d fumbled with the screen in an effort to unlock it. He’d tried to ring someone, he realized. Who? Wendy. Wendy and her magnificent _rack_, probably. But she would never understand him. 

Cartman toed at Kenny’s side. He lit a cigarette to pass the time. “I think it was fate,” he decided.

_Too bad about the mantlepiece._

“Clyde Frog,” he snapped. “We don’t _have_ a mantle, and if we did I wouldn’t be hanging human _heads_ above it.”

Kenny groaned.

Cartman dropped to a squat at his shoulder. “Holy _shit!_ It worked!”

“Get the fuck away from me,” he gurgled. “You’re out of your fat mind you son of a _bitch!_”

Eric tipped back on his heels. “Hey now. That’s not fair; you’re the one who said to ease up on women.”

“You shot me in the head!” Kenny sat up. “You -- shot me…” He glanced around, hesitated, lifted a hand to his temple.

Cartman grinned at him. “Welcome back.”

Kenny slapped the cigarette out of his mouth. Eric was so pleased with fate he laughed. A real live im_mortal_, in South Park, Colorado. Fucking _sweet!_

The delivery guy didn’t seem to understand. He dragged his knees to his chest. He looked at his blood strewn across the riverbank -- the little nuggets of blown brain matter too, if you really looked -- and he started to shake. 

Cartman crept forward. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay, Princess. You’re just not the same as everyone else.”

Kenny continued to shake. He even leaked a little, at the eyes. Cartman was confused but he knew suddenly that he’d damaged him, somehow. 

_You broke it._ said Clyde Frog. _Find a new one._

“It could take _ages_ to find another,” Cartman muttered irritably. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

No reply. 

“I didn’t mean to… I mean, Fear doesn’t like anybody. Fear said -- I didn’t think it would… hurt you.”

Nothing.

“Kenny? Listen, man. Let’s get out of here. You can hear a gunshot forty miles across the downs. There’s still an hour before open shift comes in -- let’s go back.”

He pushed at his shoulder where his face hid behind his knees.

“Ken? Are ya hungry?” He tried. “I made big cookies today, for retail. Ya like big cookies?”

This earned him a small nod. 

“You won’t have to do anything,” Cartman assured him. “I’ll -- I’ll drive your shiny car!”

“Come on,” he went on, but Kenny wasn’t moving, just shutting up tighter, egg-like, against the outside. He looked ready to fall on his side and crack open.

_Immortal egg yolk. Slrrrp!_

“That’s not very nice.” Cartman thought it sounded kind of gross. “Get on up, man, the blood’s coming closer.”

Finally he shuffled over and tried to draw Kenny physically out of his bundle. “Annoying little pill bug, aren’t you? Get up or I’ll pick you up like a sack of flour! C'mon. I know you don’t want to wear bloody shorts all day. Come back to the car and you can put on your skirt. Okay?”

The delivery guy at last got to his feet, bit by bit, like he had a bad case of the rickets -- and when he’d almost straightened up he clapped a hand over his leg and hobbled a little. But the leg didn’t bleed and there was no more bullet wound, just a rip in his shorts. 

“There’s no more,” Cartman said, gesturing to the torn fabric. “See? You’re like new.”

He pushed Kenny’s hand out of the way and the skater gave a low whine, like a deaf-mute challenged to speak. 

“Oh, I see,” said Cartman. “Your brain hasn’t caught up with the facts yet. Rational thought is a bitch to uproot, but once you’ve done it, the view is a lot nicer, I promise.”

Kenny stooped over the ground suddenly and Cartman half-stepped forward to catch him, but backed swiftly away when he came nose to nose with the bad side of a loaded gun. 

take it in blood... said Fear, a distant murmur.

“Uh, wait, I won’t come back -- I’m not -- ”

Kenny cocked the gun and Cartman bit his tongue. The safety fell open with a loud ordaining _click_. “Not what?” Kenny muttered. “You’re not anything, huh. You’re just _nor_mal. You picked out the pot and got _straight_, _white_, and _male_, huh? You designed the whole world and now you’re just the flavorless milky shit everyone floats around in -- is that what you think?”

He laughed, a windswept sound, turned the gun on his own head and shouted his next words: “This might come as a shock to you, Cartman: there’s nothing _nor_mal about your little world -- there’s something _wrong,_ in your _brain!_”

Cartman held up his hands. “I’m sorry I’m sorry,” he repeated, because most people liked those words. “Please don’t tell Wendy I shot you, though? She’ll be so mad. And Kyle will put me in jail again -- ”

“_Again?_”

“It was bullshit! The witness lied on the stands, I never even touched him! Nobody believed Diamond either -- ”

“Dude, shut up,” Kenny demanded, sober. “How long were you inside?”

Cartman let his hands fall. “It was a five-year sentence. I served three. It was all bullshit, though.”

The delivery guy looked left and right across the downs. He seemed to be lobbing something back and forth in his mouth. Finally, he spat a wad of pink foam into the grass, popped the safety on Cartman’s glock and tucked it in the back of his shorts. “You _def_initely shouldn’t be carrying this, then.”

He spat again and set off at a slow trudge through the sedge.

Cartman trotted after him. 

The ride was awkward, for some reason. Despite being radically different from one another there hadn’t been any awkwardness between them before, he thought. And if he didn’t do something about it, he could lose his shot at an immortal best friend.

The Night Kitchen nestled just off the main drag in a frosty dell of parking lots, pubs and strip-malls, a few vague attempts at curb appeal -- it was an older district of North Park known colloquially as the _upper village_. The downtown area was a little more uppity and boasted renovated cathedrals, fancy dog breeds, and several avant-garde rag shops calling themselves bou_tiques_. Plus an outdoor sculpture garden and an art gallery or two. And if you got thirsty tramping around in your Birkenstocks and circle-scarves and just-slightly-off-kilter boyfriend sweaters, you could head into the Black Cap for an eight-dollar coffee and the shittiest customer service in town.

Cartman hated Black Cap. He hated that he could always see it: a standalone shop with hard edges, Western styling and white shutters, perched on a hill overlooking the village. Black Cap had the lurking eye of a reptile, the bite and the poison, too -- on clear days, you could see the evil leaking out. The baker over there should’ve been canned last year after he got caught bonking on the premesis. Tweek wasn’t on the payroll at the time, but Cartman still thought it set a lousy precedent. _He_ didn’t have time to bonk on his two nights off a week. Pretty fucking insulting that Tucker should get to do it on an hourly wage.

Kenny guided his terrific car into a space in front of the noble Night Kitchen, a careful distance from Cartman’s crusty Volvo, slouched nearby and half-merged with a frost heave from last night’s flurry.

“Aren't you coming in?” Cartman asked, then looked for an echo. 

Clyde Frog took advantage of the brief silence. _Immortal beans for breakfast! I like 'em BOILED._

“Stop!”

“Huh?” The car jerked into park. Kenny stared at his knuckles. “You know what, man, I’m just gonna -- I’m going home.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Cartman fumbled. “You’re doing a good job of it right now, but I think… I think, in a minute, you’re gonna be really trashed. You might freak out after all, and call Wendy -- ”

“I’m fine.”

“No, come on -- come in. Just for a minute.” He opened the passenger door and purposely left it ajar. Nobody drove away with a fucking door ajar. “I need to get your paperwork anyway. So you can get paid for today.”

“I don’t care.”

“Whuh? Of _course_ you do, motherfucker!" Cartman circled the rear of the car and pulled open the driver door. “You know what the Germans did with their money after the First World War? The currency was so inflated they _burned_ it. The heat was worth more. When the next world war economy rolls around, and Colorado becomes a nuclear wasteland, you’re gonna want something to burn.”

Kenny still had his hands on the wheel. He hadn’t even unbuckled.

“Ya wanna be warm, right? You want that money, right?”

Cartman glanced in the backseat. “Put your dress on inside?”

Kenny moved like he was made of stones. Stone, loam, and one gathered pink skirt -- he looked straight through Cartman, saw everything he had worth hiding, and made it look like cheap store-brand shit. Cartman forgot about Fear because he didn’t see it anymore. Crafty. Kenny was actually pretty crafty, for a dude.

_Pretty,_ sang Clyde Frog. _Pretty little claws go click-click-click!_

Cartman snorted. “What?"

He ushered him through the swinging doors to the back of the kitchen and onto a throne of a few dozen fifty-pound flour sacks, where he sat overlooking the sinks, the backdoor, and Cartman's bagel-foming machine. He made sure Kenny was settled firmly on his ass with his princess heels kicking before returning to the front of the house. It was time to unlock the doors but he didn’t -- just took the keys out of the register and tucked them in his pocket. On his way back, Cartman noticed he’d left the kettle on. It was the tub of boiling water he dumped bagels into to activate the yeast before going in the oven; Clyde Frog had more than once suggested the bagel kettle for a lovely, bubbling bath: the perfect fit for one disobedient young adult. Six tender babies, perhaps. Or forty-eight squirrels. Drop a brick of raw sodium in it, maybe, and blow up the block. 

Cartman tipped the foot-pedal into the _Off_ position and replaced the lid. The kettle lid was too big and unwieldy for a riot shield, but it had heft and a slender steel edge, in case you ever had to use it for a blockade, or a murder frisbee, or something. In the food industry, you never know.

He pulled one of the older kitchen rags from the pile, dumped some fresh sanny in the sink and restarted his playlist -- but the first song launched with such a maelstrom of drum and string that it almost gave _Cart_man a heart-attack. He realized he didn’t know what his new immortal bean listened to. They’d only listened to the damn radio on the car ride. 

“What do you listen to?” He plugged in the shop phone and started up Pan_bore_-us-to-fucking-death on a station that wasn’t for homos, travelled back to the flour stack, and pulled the rag off his shoulder. He wiped absently at the bloody tread on Kenny’s white shoes. Blood was easy to get off some things. Rubber, fake leather? Little bit of hot sanitizer -- _gone_-zo.

He threw out the rag and returned to tap at his knees.

“I grew up poor, too.” He offered. “Well, I was the poorest kid in my school, for a while. It’s boring to argue with people when they’ve got something obvious to rip on you for. There were a _couple_ obvious things, I guess. My mom raised me on food rewards; after ten years of it I was ten times the size of your sweet ride and sweating powdered sugar -- ”

Kenny gave a small laugh.

“_Two_ spare tires in my trunk, bro,” he pressed on. “Gassed up on maple syrup and heavy cream. My after school snacks were sticks of butter covered in that quick-drying chocolate shell shit -- ”

“Okay!” Kenny snorted. “Stop, dude, I get it. I already sort of knew, anyway.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No, it’s like -- gravity? Something’s gone, but, you can still kind of feel it all, there.” He gestured around Cartman’s shoulders. “Also Wendy may have shown me some pictures on her phone.”

“_Test_aburger,” he growled. “That triple-talking hoe -- why is she always _set_ting everything up?”

“She told me to stay away from you, actually.”

“Of _course_ she did. My entire fucking life, this bitch has been trying to set me up for failure and humiliation. She's wanted me off-limits since she stuck her tongue down my throat in the third grade."

“Mm,” Kenny hummed. "You don't really seem like her type."

"No shit! That's why she likes me on the perpetual backburner, man. Like a failsafe in case things with Stan don't work out."

"I'm pretty sure you're full of crap, but, you really craft a nice tale."

"I'm seriously," Cartman insisted. "_I’m_ not the dangerous one; I’m the victim!”

"You shot me in the leg. And the face.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that. But what are you sorry for?” Kenny snapped. “You’re not sorry for killing me, I can tell -- you’re fucking stoked on it!”

Cartman bit down on one corner of a creeping half-smile because he was _right_ and it was _still_ so fucking cool to behold. But the other half of him grimaced. You couldn’t physically harm an immortal, but you could probably hurt it emotionally, by accident. 

“Um,” he said. “I'm sorry for, the way that I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short but stuff happens.  
next one kenny's pov. fluffy.
> 
> <3


	6. crush

[pk ch. 6](https://8tracks.com/radio-fool/pk-ch-6?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) from [radio fool](http://8tracks.com/radio-fool?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button) on [8tracks Radio](https://8tracks.com?utm_medium=referral&utm_content=mix-page&utm_campaign=embed_button).

Cartman cleaned the blood off his shoes. 

Kenny didn’t know why that moved him, exactly, but it did; he couldn’t look away. It was like watching a heavyweight boxer absentmindedly try on a pair of lady’s gloves. Kenny tried to imagine how the silk might feel -- feather-light finery pulled over rootsdeep scars and calluses orange-peel thick. 

He didn’t know if Cartman was born with his soaring fragilities, or if they were wrought, perhaps, from some muddle of unsoaring childhood. A bit of both, maybe. Boxer’s hands, weaponized by years and years of sporting self-destruction. It wasn’t what they looked like so much as the way they moved -- on-script, or off-script, sometimes, but always performing. When Cartman wiped Kenny’s Octanes he wasn’t performing; a softness fell over the off-kilter baker like silk gloves and he held Kenny's heels, one by one. The unforethought purposelessness in his murdering hands delighted Kenny. He wanted more of it. 

He pulled the laces apart when he was done. 

Cartman did a lot of stuff like that. Untying things, leaving doors unclosed and half-heard conversations unexplained. Unfinished cigarettes in the ashtray, heaped over one another and still bleeding. Kenny imagined him in the handbag section of a department store, undoing every clasp. 

“Here.”

“Hm?” Kenny lowered his eyes. He kicked his feet lightly against the thick sacks of flour, and his toes brushed Cartman’s boundaries. 

The tiny paper cup didn’t look safe or steady in his hand so Kenny took it. And he took his wrist, too, for a moment, just to test the pads of his cool fingertips inside the warm mortar of his palm. Cartman pulled away and Kenny watched the hand run guiltily to his pocket. 

“I made Wendy teach me yesterday,” he said, nodding at the steaming cup.

Kenny took a sip and watched his eyes bounce. He seemed to be waiting for something again, so Kenny cleared his throat. “It’s good, man.”

“Really?” Cartman didn’t look pleased for even a second but he still backtracked like he’d been caught at some small kindness: “I mean, I didn’t think her job was that hard. I can’t believe the ability to push a button and angle brown spew into a cup is really worth eight bucks an hour.”

“You’re telling me.” Kenny agreed, feeling tolerant, almost -- a little blithe. He leaned back on his hands. “Have you seen that pasty fuckin’ skin-tag who directs traffic outside the quad every morning? Guy gets paid to stand around and juggle his own nuts.”

Cartman ducked his head and giggled. “That doesn’t sound easy.”

“I’m sure he comes from a long family tradition of nut-jugglers.”

“You’re kind of an asshole,” he said, grinning again. 

“Did you think you were alone?”

“No, but -- I thought I was the only one who was any good at it.”

Kenny decided to take it as a compliment. He’d already reached a respectable altitude on the mountainous quest for emotional maturity, and adjusted his view from the balcony accordingly: things like happiness and positivity were not innate or inevitable with the passage of time; they were skills to be studied, muscles to flex and refine. Love was the same way: it didn’t come swinging around with your _name_ written on it; it wasn’t forecasted or _dest_ined to pass; love, trust and vulnerability took practice -- time, tests and failures, just like math problems. His mom taught him that. 

“You, uh. You won’t tell Wendy I shot you, right?”

If emotional maturity were a mountain peak, Eric Cartman would be hundreds of leagues away, in a pineapple under the sea. 

He decided to have a go at him, anyway. You never know if something will suit you until you try it on, after all. Kenny wasn’t just any old coat-hanger, either. Kenny was particular; he knew enough about himself to be _specific_, now. He would shove his shoulders and arms into Cartman, and if it didn’t fit or look the way he liked, he’d leave it all on the dressing-room floor and find someone else. Only the very weak-minded needed guns and fists -- Kenny had forged a weapon from his whole body, and he knew precisely how to use it. 

“I didn’t mean to,” the baker was saying. “You were having a fit. The _light_ was in my eyes.”

Kenny busied himself lifting his shirt and popping the button on his shorts. He toed off his shoes, then squared his shoulders and slid off the makeshift flour seat. Cartman was right: he really didn’t want to go the whole day splattered with old blood. 

“What are you -- ?”

A rustle, the faint _clink_ of his belt striking the gray slate. The floor was lukewarm underfoot, a halfway texture between rugged tile and smooth stone. Cartman scoffed and performed an abrupt about-face to stare pointedly in a different direction. 

Kenny stepped into his skirt. “If I keep quiet about it, what will you do for me?”

Cartman whipped around. “Anything!” His eyes took stock of the ceiling, then Kenny’s shoes, then narrowed hard on the layered pink flowlines over his legs. “I mean, I’ll beat someone up for you, or get you cocaine, or something. College students still like blow, right?”

“What are you, from the seventies?” Kenny hopped back on his flour seat -- it was actually kind of nice, a sturdy vantage point over the kitchen. He felt enthroned. The whole shop enthroned him, really. He could still feel remnants of sunrise looping over his shoulders in a loose, dragging mantle. And if he thought hard enough, Kenny felt a fragment of distant terror turning in his stomach, along with the rest of his wretched brushed-aside things. “Haven’t you ever had a friend before?”

Cartman looked at him blankly. 

“Or, you know,” Kenny coaxed. “A homie. Someone to mess around with.”

“No, I hate people.” He said. “My dream is to have my own amusement park so I can keep everybody out.”

This guy should be on _greet_ing cards, Kenny thought. Good morning and go fuck yourself.

“You’ve never had a friend?” He pressed. “You’ve never had one friend?”

Cartman appeared to think about it, but it didn’t occupy him for very long: “No.” Then he jerked like he’d been slapped and ducked his ear to his shoulder. “That's not what I said!”

“Okay, jeez.” Kenny remembered Cartman was a few petals short of a centerpiece. “Well, look, man, I’d love to do you a solid, here, but -- ”

“Will you?” He interjected, and looked angry about it. “Will you be my friend, I mean.”

Kenny clasped both his hands behind his neck. “No one’s ever asked like that before,” he mused.

“What d’you mean? It’s a friend request. Isn’t that what everyone’s doing these days?”

“It’s more the _way_ you’re doing it.”

“Oh,” his eyes darted down again. “Is it because I killed you? I’m sorry.”

Kenny sighed. “No, dude, you’re _not_ sorry. We’ve been over this. And friends don’t lie to each other.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll have to make it up to me, somehow.” 

“What d’you want?”

He tapped at his chin. “I don’t know. Maybe a few things. You have a lot of shit to make up for. And Wendy is my friend, too, so -- ”

“No, she’s not,” Eric scoffed. “She’s a fucking customer service professional. She’s been getting paid to whore her presence on people since the fifth grade, and when she wants someone to like her, she makes it happen.”

“You ever kissed a boy b'fore?”

“Whuh? Uh,” Cartman caught himself. “_Fuck_ no! I’d rather sheathe a machete down my pants!”

Kenny examined his nails. He didn’t think that he _would_ ever tell Wendy what happened on the downs, nor would he expect her to believe it all -- but he pulled on the loose thread anyway and waited for Cartman to follow it the rest of the way. 

He was slow, though. “Give me your hand,” Kenny commanded. 

“My, uh -- ”

“Your _hand_, Brown Eyes.”

Cartman glanced around like he thought someone else was in the shop. The sun reached racketeering heights over the upper village, and daylight stole into the bakery, tracing patterns on the smeared windows over the swinging doors. Sounds of faraway traffic sloshed down the main roads, sending spill-over echoes racing around the Night Kitchen parking lot. Car-horns, brakes. The occasional engine in uproar.

Kenny slid his fingers back into the wide-open doldrums of Eric's palm. It was all he wanted, at the moment. 

“Is this something, um,” Cartman cleared his throat and swallowed. “Friends do?”

“Mhm.” Where he sat, Kenny was about a head taller. Sunshine warmed the back of his neck and he welcomed the baker into his shadow. “I’ll forget about the whole thing if you do it, too,” he said, convinced it was true. 

Cartman lifted his face and peered at him with a question weighing on his brow. Kenny ignored it, dipped his head until their noses brushed in quick confluence -- strangers touching on a crowded bus. Cartman curled his fingers over Kenny’s in knee-jerk surprise, then rushed them away again. Kenny took advantage of the following fluster to take a small breath over his mouth. Eric took it back, loud like he’d been holding out for a while. So Kenny tried again, and lured him into a series of artful dodges; trading breaths back and forth, again, and again, not touching but in contact nonetheless. The air buzzed with a sound like a hundred hornets. 

Sheathe a knife down his pants, yeah right. He was curious. Kenny could make _any_one curious. 

He dipped his head further and explored the vertical valleys between Cartman’s eyes and mouth, still just the ghost of touch, flutter of nosetips. Cartman acquired a look of troubled concentration. His lower lip caught repeatedly on the corners of his boyish teeth: broad and flat in the front, sharky at the edges. Kenny was tempted but he waited, and dodged patiently around him. Dodge, dodge, dodged again -- one very close call. 

_Crack!_ The moment shattered; it wasn’t a gunshot or anything but it was murderous and unanticipated and it called a gunshot to mind. The first bang was followed up by a quick, vigorous _thump_ing -- Kenny realized someone was open-hand slapping at the backdoor. 

Cartman staggered away, looked wildy around. Something was after him with claws and fangs. The little warmth built up between them dashed off, replaced by a freeze like three days after Halloween. 

“Shit,” Eric murmured. He slapped at a jangle of keys in his pocket. “Open shift. I forgot to unlock the doors.” 

He hustled to the door. “_Shut up!_” He hollered.

The banging continued. Cartman pawed one hand over his head, disrupting a few overgrown tufts of brown from his week-old buzz, and finally worked the key into the lock. 

“What the hell!”

Cartman shuffled aside. “Oh, take a fucking pill, Testaburger.”

“Then _do_ your job, asshole,” Wendy grumped, entering together with a spray of frost and a frigid zephyr on her heels. She whipped her hat off her head. “It’s 20 degrees out, everyone's forgotten how to drive, and I got _screwed_ on the way off campus.”

Before anyone could respond, Wendy brandished something in front of the baker’s nose. “That’s right -- _screwed_. A literal _screw_ lodged in my tire. I drove here on a suffering flat, I have to call triple-A on my break, and I am _not_ in the mood for you.”

Cartman raised his hands and backed up almost into the mop bucket. “Yes, ma’am.” 

Wendy wafted past him like a busy west wind. 

“Oh, Kenny,” she stopped, swept aside a wayward current of dark hair. “You’re still here. And -- ” she glanced at his shorts on the floor. “You’ve been busy.”

“Hey,” he said, sliding off his perch again. He gathered up his shorts, rolled them into a burrito and tucked it under his arm. “I was just on my way out.”

He cut the pleasantries short because he knew the game, and it was coming up on a crucial moment: straight boys were prone to self-defeating panics about identity. And Cartman, well -- who the hell _knew_ what kinds of things _he_ was prone to. 

Kenny caught the door on the backswing and addressed the dude hanging behind it like a jacket starched to death in cold-blood. “Smoke?” He offered. “Smoke -- wanna go out for a smoke?”

Verbal repetition was the simplest brainwashing technique. Everybody was a sort of helpless mirror, deep down. A collection of reflections with no clear caster. 

Eric nodded like he could only understand very simple words, and fell out the door after him. 

Kenny let an illusory cloud boundary build up between them before breaking the silence.

“No offense, but,” he began, spitting into an aluminum can near the door filled with old cigarette butts. It still wore a label claiming to be six pounds of white albacore tuna. “What does she fucking expect? Living on Greenstone campus. There’s a reason they call it the Zoo.”

“Because the university residential association moves all the minorities there?”

Kenny waved his free hand. Cartman tucked his into his pocket. A few inches of frost lingered in the building’s shadow. They wordlessly arranged themselves side-by-side on the back stoop, facing the sun like a couple of flowers at a stand-in theater. 

“It’s a Crush,” Cartman muttered finally. 

“Huh?”

“I’ve watched you -- you never actually crush it.” The baker shuffled around and took Kenny’s bummed cig between his forefinger and thumb. He held it up and pinched the shiny blue emblem. “See? You break the capsule inside. Now it’s a menthol.”

“Oh,” Kenny chuckled, accepting the offering again. “I thought it just tasted like a regular fucking cigarette.”

“People’re always doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“What you just did, just now -- thinking _norm_ally about things. Too caught up in being polite and neutral to notice when something’s actually special. It’s worse in college towns like this one where everyone’s a liberal or a homo.” He ducked his head and murdered a drag like he was swigging from some fiery Harry Potter shit. “If you’re _too_ accepting you won’t ever recognize interesting shit anymore. All these labels, this ob_sessive_ classification and organization, you know -- it’s all just treading the surface. You gotta look past that stuff, sometimes, you know. You gotta -- ”

“Crush it?”

“Jesus,” he swore. “I dunno. I’m not talking about cigarettes, man. I’m talking about people. I mean, what do you call yourself?”

“Meaning, what?” asked Kenny, entertained. 

“Meaning, if you went to a fairy parade, or something, and everybody’s wearing those nametags that say Hi, My Name Is -- and underneath it you write what species of queer you are, what would you write? _Pan_sexual aromantic, or some shit?”

Kenny choked on an updraft of smoke. That was exactly what he’d write. 

“But isn’t that just another way of saying fuck bitches get money?” He barreled onward. “Like, you don’t need to dress it up any more than that.”

Kenny bit the inside of his cheek, looked down and straightened out some of his layers. 

“_You’re_ not like that,” Cartman finished, coldly.

“No, dude, I think I’m exactly like that.”

He shook his head. “How can you still not see it? You forced a _bullet_ out your brain, a minute ago. Doesn’t that change anything? Don’t things kind of -- taste different now?”

Kenny furrowed his brow, sucked on his menthol. 

Eric eyed him. Equalizing currents of shade and sunshine bullied his baby browns into black and gold. “What’re you going to do?”

“Skip class,” he answered, honestly. “Go home and sleep on my pull-out couch.”

Cartman snorted. “I’m ducking out, too. I don’t want to make dough with Wendy in there on a warpath. If you come back later I’ll get your papers. After five, when no one’s around.”

Kenny muddled his free hand into his pocket, where it joined Eric’s there at last. 

They had another quiet moment while the cigarettes smoked themselves down. _Mirrorland_, Kenny thought. Where sunrise meant the end of the day.

He found something else in his pocket. A hard edge. It reminded him of something. “Hey,” he murmured. “Is this _my_ phone?”

“Yes,” Cartman admitted, some of the gravel of guilt in his tone. “You can have it.”

“Gee, thanks,” Kenny pulled his hand free and moved to put the phone away. 

“Um,” Cartman stopped him. “Wait.”

“What?”

“Um.”

“Oh,” said Kenny, gentle, and led with a few words: “Do you want -- ?”

“Yes,” he admitted, gravelly again. 

“Well, you’re gonna have to ask me properly, bro.”

“What? I thought we were friends -- ”

Kenny shook his head, smiling. “I needa hear it.”

“Come _on_,” Cartman sighed, disastrous. He pitched his sizzling filter at the can and missed by a mile. “Can-I-have-your-number?”

“You want my digits? Is this a digit-request?”

He scowled. “Yes.”

Kenny unlocked his phone, chuckling wholeheartedly. He rubbed a little crispy dried blood off the screen, and it didn’t even bother him. He opened a new contact under _Eric C._ and handed it back.

Halfway through an alluring display of thumbwork, Cartman looked up. “_No_ pictures. My phone doesn’t get them. I don’t receive them. I don’t open them. No pictures.”

Kenny raised his hands. “I won’t ask your opinion on any of my outfits, then.”

_Tsk_. He exhaled through his teeth and finished the entry. Kenny shot him a bagel emoji and tucked his phone away.

“Alright, Princess. See ya later.”

Kenny slunk back to his car. Bit of a rocky start to the day, but it had paid off, in a couple of ways. Earn a dime, bag a dime. All bullets aside, he was calling it a squeaky-clean double-U. Life handed a poor man lemons; but the poor man had left Kenny with rinds. He knew what it was like to have less than nothing. And what a difference it made, on the darkest days, to have a little bit of something, even if it was just the frostbite taste of menthols on his breath -- or the promise of a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been so cool writing and sharing my ideas with you guys --  
thx for the love, for cereal. <3
> 
> i drafted the first chapter of _cursed eye_, finally.  
its finna be  
the dopest shit  
i have ever written


	7. mirrorland (the in-between)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your art and your tunes this time are instrumental. _Fear and Loathing._ highly recommend.  
more stuff coming soon as i get my head out of the toilet.

  


Kenny returned home. But something slewed into his heart while he slept. 

Cold wood, carrion feet, golden crack under a closed door -- you know the feeling. The night's turned over and gone terminal at last; the only next thing is to wake like all living things eventually wake but instead you linger, docile lover in the clutches of sleep, hoping for more and getting infinitely less from his dying breaths. 

It was all a bit too pious for Kenny.

He spurned the sacred, the special, the supernatural -- he even put _effort_ into it. Four-hundred years ago it wasn’t a problem if a guy wanted to have a late-evening leak on the side of a church-building. That is, until a couple of extras wearing funny hats and huffing the holy _tin_sel decided it wasn’t just a building anymore it was God’s _house_ and those are sacred bricks you’re pissing on. 

_Piss on it all,_ Kenny thought. 

Part of him knew he’d simply been around too long to allow the bumbling human Establishment to dictate when and where he could appropriately whip it out. The public indecency was going on _in_side God’s glory-hole, for anyone who cared to look. Instead they tell you to keep your mind open, and expect a firm fondling from the Truth.

Kenny wedged his way from slumber with a parting snort and tried to blink away the frenzied gray in-betweenness that followed.

It did not dissipate.

His mom warned him about staying too long in-between. Autohypnosis was fine for a flat sleep once in a while, she said. But too much becomes dangerous; your mind could draw a map and lead you there while you aren't looking. Kenny knew what that was like. He used to do it to his schoolmates, sometimes -- draw maps for them, suggest things. He made a few people eat grass, crawl around and bark like dogs. Fun stuff. It earned him a reputation for a while and that was fine. Those were his middle school years. Until one time he made some kid put a rat in a can, fill it with coal oil and hold it over a flame, and everyone watched the thing in there screaming. 

He stopped using hypnotic suggestion because it was no longer interesting. When you grow up poor, childhood is something store-bought -- Kenny made due with what he had. 

He bumped his nose and swore, falling flat again. Darkness was his only company. Instead of a deep breath he got a little goldfish-bite of warm air that flopped over and expired on his tongue. Whatever oxygen dwindled down to his lungs wasn't used -- just ignored, like an eyelid had shut under his ribs. He felt wood around him, wood chanting on all sides except for directly above, where a vortex loomed, and the impression formed in his mind of a terrible weight overhead. 

Kenny toed off his right shoe. He didn’t know what was going on, exactly, but rational thinking informed him this was probably fucking it. 

He emptied the secret heel compartment over his chest, tapped out the dottle on his single-hitter pipe and packed it solemnly with some shake leftover from yesterday's dime-bag. At the strike of a match and the first singe on his last smoke ever, Kenny gasped on vacuum space and fumbled. Above him hovered some sort of Daemonic creature -- many-eyed and hideously pronged, delled and valleyed with twisted lava flows made solid -- Kenny dropped the burning match to his chest and slapped a hand over it. He stayed there in just the sound of his own stifled breathing for several moments, frozen in the raw fascination of fear. 

He lit another match. Sighed through his nose hard enough to put it out. He was tripping, of course. Some fool had buried him with a _mirror_ under the casket lid. You couldn’t trust the damn _under_taker not to try and troll you, these days.

Kenny lit a third match just to be sure. He patted the mirror surface and his reflection, naturally, mimicked him on the other side. The tiny flame between them split two ways and doubled in magnitude, glowing twice as bright as one alone. Kenny wondered about that a moment, knocking out the dottle on his pipe once more. Then he tucked the metal mouth-piece between his knuckles, and threw a fist at the mirror. 

The shards he could deal with -- balled up his parka around his knuckles, the way he and Kevin used to when they were kids playing at boxing, really _slugging_ at each other -- and although the wood took some work, leg, and leverage, nothing compared to displacing six feet of cold dirt.

Kenny clawed at rock and root, squirmed, wormed, hammered just enough space for himself into the earth, and propelled himself through it, inch after aching inch. An anchor didn’t feel heavy as his paper bones, suddenly; maybe the box was calling him back. The terrain went soft and slimy after the first few layers of silt, as if he’d been buried in a rush, or right before a big storm. _Get that body in the ground, or it’ll be washed away!_ Solid reasoning. You’re an “it” after you die, of course. 

Clay humbled to mud meekened to slop. Kenny broke the surface to thunderous applause. It was raining, and hard. Wind and water thrashed his eardrums in dumb drumbeat droves. He almost crawled back into his warm coffin -- what was the point, if he could hardly breathe out here, either! 

A globulous spray of dirt hit him presently in the face. 

“Hey!”

Kenny tried to half-crawl, half swim-walk his way toward light, but found the way blocked on four sides by steep storm-slicked walls -- he was still too deep in the earth. More dirt landed in the mix. He called out again. He wasn’t dead and buried, someone was burying him _now_.

“Hey!” A third time. “The fuck -- the fuck is -- ” He searched the rootwork for a handhold, ripping and tearing to no avail. “The fuck is your problem, pal! The -- fuck!”

“_Hsst!_ You’re disrupting the service!”

“Um,” Kenny squinted through the rain and gestured to the mound of mulch miring him around knees. “Shove your service -- I’m not dead!”

“So you aren’t,” said the grave-maker, leaning over his spade to peer down at him. Kenny thought he saw the silhouette of a large beetle strapped belly-up to his back. “No living person should warrant a funeral service, should they? I suppose you meant for all these good people to gather in the rain as a joke of some kind?”

Kenny tipped up on his toes. He gave a hop, then a leap, caught the lip of the grave-plot and flung his arms wrists and elbows into the furry loam beyond. The wet grass pulled up instantly in his fingers, together with a thin layer of flood-ground. He kicked to stay aloft. “There’s no one here.” 

“Shy bunch, to be sure. And yet the rain has arrived, precisely on time.”

“Actually,” Kenny grit his teeth, straining. “There is no rain.”

The rain ceased. It was, it wasn't.

_Tch_, the gravedigger’s defeated sigh. “That’s a shame. Water _is_ the universal conduit. It will seep in and break down _every_-body, before the end. Even you.”

“Help me up,” Kenny commanded. “You buried me alive so help me up.”

But the gravedigger backed away and his suggestion fell flat. “But _is_ it alive? Or does it trespass on life? I see the immortal eye beneath a mortal coil -- you _inter_loper! Corrupt seed!”

Kenny thrashed, slutted and scarred a path out of the muck, dragged himself to his knees and sat coughing on naked air. Some things in life you knew before even birth; one of them was when you were in a place you ought not stay. 

“That poor soul," said the gravedigger. "This mortal soil -- never saw a baby born like that.”

Kenny was almost ready to stand. For some reason he looked over his shoulder and down the dirt tunnel he'd crawled from; at the bottom he saw not a busted casket or shards of a broken mirror but a desecrated corpse, starmap of flayed skin and pulp like an overripe grape popped open in the sun. 

Kenny looked away. His hands were slippery, he was everywhere slick with blood. Something worried at his stomach lining but it wasn't an emotion. Emotions didn't sit inside you in your dreams, like how they do awake. Kenny didn't feel much of anything in his dreams besides constant fear for his _own_ ass.

“Never saw a soul reborn like that, no.” The gravedigger, still. “‘Til you. _You_ break the mirror so often, We're starting to think ya _lost_ something, around here. Maybe you’re just _look_in’ for somethin’.” He broke off to snort at his own joke, sobered again in an instant. “Nothing dead can ever return, of course. The body goes to water, the soul to higher elements. Why do you keep on _break_in’ the damn mirror? Don’t ya wanna go back to super-nature? Don’t ya got a soul worth integratin’?”

“I’ve dreamed this way before,” Kenny asked himself, and answered, in one. 

“Only an hundred _times!_” The gravedigger cried. “Not suicide, was it? Can’t be. See, if a thing knowingly shortens the duration of its own life, there _is_ no service. Not on this side. No sable stone, no burial, and no mirror. Mirror is a privilege, see. Break it up too many times, trespasser, and the glass will show you somethin’ nasty.”

Kenny suffered to his feet, flicked the excess clay and afterbirth from his hands and attempted to skive the grime from his brows and eyelashes. He had nothing but some vague go-with-the-motions memories and a drowsy dream-consciousness to work with; it was the feeling of making your way down a staircase in the dark. If he let it get to him, it would. And who knew how high up he was, or if he’d snap his neck at the bottom. 

It probably had something to do with his autohypnosis, Kenny reasoned; you weren't supposed to trick yourself into states _too_ often.

Kenny had a mind that stamped and bristled like a hundred nervous horses -- the first thing he'd ever learned was how to hide it, to nick it together in time. He knew he'd stumbled down a hole like this one before, and was child enough not to doubt it.

Moonlight spread in open luxury over the wrinkled gravestones, parallelograms of sharp-edged silver tasseled in ivy and thorn. Blue shadows hooked and piled under squalls of white-washed wilderness. It was really pretty magnificent, Kenny thought, still fresh off an undead dinghy-ride down the birth canal and shivering under a layer of goo. He selected one satin stream of light, saw it for what it was, and peeled it from its grave-marker (some fellow named _Mithras_) to fashion as his own.

Kenny shook out his new skirt, envy of the moon, and flicked the last of the blood-memory from his hands. He spent too much of his life on the two-seater with grime and regret to want to suffer their company in the privacy of his dreams. He’d always imagined a dress for his dream RPGs. Not just any dress, one of those sexy Elven archer numbers. Or some blue chick _Fifth Element_ shit. The kind of get-up that makes you stop and look and think _she’s_ not from around here, no way. That’s gotta be, royalty from another planet. Sailor fucking Sunbeam, dowry the size of a red giant. His dreams were always FPS, too, which meant he would be receiving his first weapon soon.

Kenny spat into the soil a clean yard from his last iridescent ruffle, sufficiently riled. 

“This _your_ graveyard, reaper O’fuck-ass McDonald?”

He gave a stiff nod. “It is. Before that, I was the bell-ringer, and before, caretaker of the altar -- ”

“Okay, I’ve taken shits on sunny _days_ shadier than this graveyard. I’ll take a shit right here! You call this a fog? I’ve seen bosoms heavier than your atmosphere, man -- you don’t fucking scare me.” There was a giggle behind his ear. Kenny whirled around. A shadow dogged a tall headstone. 

A voice through the fog. _What’s on his back?_

Kenny turned on his heel again, every movement accompanied by the caper and sigh of his moonlit dress, silver water ebbing at his knees in such tragic and delightful tides that a little rain started up again. Or was it sea spume off the cliff-face? The soft clatter of liquid applause. He flicked away the moisture with a sigh. If the price of looking good was a little slip in his hold on the weather, he could handle it. Every Wonderland had a fucking Alice -- sometimes the only thing you could do was play along. 

“What’s on your back, anyway?”

“A trick! Only mortals look into the past.”

“A-ha,” Kenny arranged his hands on his hips. “It looks like a baby to me. What’s wrong with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why do you keep it tied there?” He squinted. It was a decent fog, anyway. "It's not moving."

“It’s an exceedingly _strange_ child.”

“That doesn’t give you an excuse to treat it like shit.”

_That baby’s dead as the Dodo._

Kenny looked around. A shade appeared behind a tall sable stone, but it shied from view without shifting, occupying a dark spot on Kenny’s vision without being dark at all. A name rose in his memories like a cut in the throat… too far back for the tongue to probe. 

“Lies!” said the grave-maker. “Nothing dead ever returns! The child lives! I heard it… in the ground, crying still. It would not cease ‘til I put it behind me.”

“And you had to, _phys_ically put it behind you, I guess?” Kenny, tired. 

_He dug it up._ In the corner of his eye a black spot flickered, the shade reappeared with the fizz and antique _pop!_ of a used-up lightbulb. Its voice was just a mean wave in his brain. _Disgusting, isn't it?_

There was something familiar about it.

“The child lives -- ”

_You’re a freak -- _ The shade grew arms, legs. They began to grapple. _Give it to me!_

“Pray, get your hands, off my throat!”

It did have hands now, Kenny thought. He watched it wrestle the reaper to the ground, take his spade, then rip through the throngs holding the child to his back. And before Kenny could think much of the fight or develop any motivating cause for alarm, the horned thing turned and flung the baby neck-first into the fog, over the waiting cliffside. He heard a body of water roar up to meet it.

“Whoa!” Kenny clapped once. “Not cool!”

It looked at him. Two pairs of cherry-red eyes set in its shadowed face. All four narrowed on him. _It was already dead._

“It will come back,” the gravedigger said. “It always comes back.”

“Stop sobbing.” Kenny addressed the reaper. He side-stepped around the squishier ground and reached a sort of path, or, slight depression in the aggressive under- and overgrowth. “Mad as a fucking march hare, aren’t you? Can you at least tell me the way out of here? I forgot. I think… I left myself a map to a dead-end, or something.”

“A cul-de-sac, I should think.”

Kenny no sooner felt a flash of annoyance through his mindfog than the shade creature fizzled forward, shoved a knee in the gravedigger’s gut. Next the heavy _thunk_ of the bevelled spade on his back. 

He lifted a hand. “Alright. Don’t go crazy.” It stepped away. “Old man. How do I get back? I need to wake up, I think. The normal things aren’t working.”

“You don’t get it -- ” He coughed. “Poor soul. You -- trespasser!"

The sable creature kicked at his side and Kenny let it go for a while. It was easy to hypnotize a thing with four eyes.

"Okay. That's enough."

"All those darn mirrors." The grave-digger gurgled. "Every time you break in, a mortal soul loses its path to the All. No mirror, no circle, no rest for the soul -- another service, ruined!”

"So," Kenny glanced at the half-open grave. “You’re saying, there really was someone else down there? Somebody in the box with me?”

“Aye.” The gravedigger shook his head. “You subclass immortals, tramping about the mortal plane. Small gods. _Hsst!_ I voted _no_ on the referendum. Thought we should grab you at the border, right here. The thing about your kind -- you can hitchhike, but the ride ain’t free.”

“Uh-huh,” Kenny spooled some shadow around his fingers and pulled a cloak around his shoulders, throwing up the hood. “How do I get a free ride?”

“Why -- that would be -- not since the hawk Agni stole fruit off the very Tree!” Kenny offered him a puff on his pipe. “But the immortal pool is greatly diluted now, the metahistory forgotten; great civilizations are isolated each to their own age, knowledge either lost or gone up in flames. There are no more entire races of great beings. Trespasser, fool who subjugates the moon, you don’t have the _wings_ for such heights! Agni held a whole sky under his breast -- ”

_Where is he now?_ The shade leered. 

“What happened to the hawk?” said Kenny.

“Agni? Struck down.”

“Not so great, was he.”

“Lightning, roll of thunder -- ” the gravedigger puffed away, hunched under an invisible burden. “One single bolt. Scattered his feathers all over the mortal plane. That’s why,” His eyes found Kenny. His voice changed. “I voted _no_ on the referendum. Mortal souls should stay _in_ the hole, see, even polluted ones like yours. You only get _one_ mirror, see? You’re in my books, trespasser, soul-eater, 'specially overdue for a reaping.”

_"I think you're a lying fucking gravy tunnel!"_ The shade advanced. Its voice hummed and gradually cleared. "How about I bury _you_ inside one of these chest cavities? Make you wiggle up out of it while I finger your mom -- "

“Cartman.” It finally came to him. 

The shade cocked its head. It flickered closer without moving -- Kenny held his breath. It was still pretty fucking hideous up close. Horned to hell and back. Kenny counted six, then stopped, beacause the rest were vague and conditional.

One light-shy appendage reached out, vanished, pulled together darkly, and acquired the shape of a human arm, with its hand upturned. 

Kenny dipped his fingers hesitantly into the wide pan of his palm. He pulled back quickly. “You’ve got the texture of a bag of beetles, bro.”

"Suck a spiky one, Princess. It’s_ your_ dream."

"But are you really here, or is this my projection of you?"

"Maybe both. Maybe you thought this was hot." 

He offered him the reaper's spade. Kenny took it. "It's not. It's sort of like trying not to look at someone just to spare them finding out they were looked at."

The sable thing abruptly fizzled out, Cartman vanished. Kenny leaned the shovel over his shoulder. "Little bitch."

"Poor soul." The gravedigger hiccuped. "_Hsst!_ Another service, ruined!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i know  
wtf am i doing


	8. sun spots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shorty  
another beattape for yall bc i am so fucking tired  
this one starts with exactly the nostalgic pause i was looking for in this chapter --
> 
> pls enjoy

  


Cartman dove into sleep like he couldn’t wait to butcher the day in his dreams.

When he woke, he saw blue. The high tides of a late-morning sky puddled under the window screen, sloughed over the floorboards and rippled over his ankles and eyelids. Blue walls, blue blankets, blue skin. Pale blue dot. _Don’t move._ He told himself. Don’t move and don’t think -- you don’t know anything. Count backwards from four hundred eighty-six in nines and sixes and threes, and you’ll stay asleep.

He smelled a bit of someone’s breakfast on the air, or maybe he fantasized it. Something greasy-fat like sausage -- heat-split and charred black on the grill side. If he focused he could actually _taste_ it. But he didn’t want to focus. He wanted to sleep.

Something chugged mistily along outside, like a medium-light rain, or wind through the thinbone pines. Or a large vehicle of some kind, idling in the drive. He heard the sounds of electronic instrumentation murmuring through the walls in up-down squalls; a chaos of raised voices scattered in and out of frequency directly above, coupled with the faint swish and clatter of dish-washing; the sound of someone's wretched morning sickness echoed under the floor -- and it was all to the tune of an absolute _mob_bery of winter boots, khnk-_khunk_ing up and down the concrete stairs in endless, argumentative pairs. 

Whatever was chugging outside took on a turn of life. It sounded like an oil tanker with five goddamn stomachs. The floor hummed and the mirrors faintly rattled on his Newtonian reflector telescope. In another minute Cartman could taste the smell of burning fossil fuels on his pillow. Draught of liquid fucking coal, down the hatch. Elsewhere, a baby began to cry.

At once, a dozen criminally uncut claws sheathed themselves in the skin of his loins. 

Cartman groaned and upheaved. Versace flew from the bed with a disgruntled _mrrow_ \-- leaving his groin in absolute fucking ribbons, but pleasantly warm. He’d slept four hours, he supposed. Musicians have excellent sense of time. 

He rolled out of bed and waited on its threshold while his various liquids reoriented to life on two legs. It felt like he’d left something behind. Cartman appraised the wrinkled imprint of his dead man’s slumber in the mattress, eyes open but only one-half each, and he straightened out the sheet but still felt a darkness there, lingering. 

_Hypnos_, Cartman thought. Sleep: cousin of death. He imagined he had an unborn twin. Growing inside him, or something.

If he wore socks in the main apartment, he’d mess up his last clean pair. If he wore his feet, well.

Stan had beaded the hallway. Nothing short of total fucking _cata_lepsy could get Cartman across a beaded threshold with_out_ feeling like a dirty hippie. 

The last one to leave the crib had left the lights on. He followed a ruddy orange glow into the kitchen and found one wheaty beer waiting for him in the fridge. It even had a little note on it: _Drink me._

Cartman didn’t think they always deserved new paragraphs but he arranged his thoughts in this fashion anyway.

Live inside something long enough, you forget it even exists.

The window over the sink glowed milky blue. Cartman looked out on a shifting plane of ground clouds and winter weather still two days in the future. Shards of swimmy ultramarine did battle with sodium-vapor gold over the kitchen windowsill. In-groups and out-groups. Like funk and trap, bagpipes and dubstep, whiskey and RedBull. Skateboards and dresses. Two things at first glance diametrically opposed, but somehow, kind of pleasant in the right combination. 

The turntable was crackling in the living room. He flipped the record and reintroduced needlepoint to vinyl. It was some wishy-washy oceanic ghost-pop shit, female vocals interspersed with the clunking sounds of antique locks and keys.

Red was probably the last to leave.

She’d left her flute out -- fourteen-inch glass monolith standing tall over a mass grave of cards and wheaty half-empties -- it had a puckered ice catch, pearly black finish and no carb, just a harpoonish pike for lifting the nailpin bowl. They called it the Black Pearl. The last bowl had been burned to a perfect crescent moon. Maybe she left in a rush. Cartman finished it off. _Flub-lub-lub_. Like you could drown if you pulled hard enough. He seared it to solar eclipse, coughed till his ribs overlapped and bits of liquid lung dangled down his chin. Coughing was a time machine. 

Red worked ride-along at River’s Edge. That was the Hell’s Pass contingent in North Park: the full name was _Hell’s Pass at River’s Edge_ but nobody called it that. Most people were on opposite ends of the clock from Cartman but occasionally he and Red collided. She told him all her ride-along horror stories while he coughed and coughed and coughed. It even ripped a crick in his neck and Eric laughed through the crud and craquelure about it. He felt invincible. 

It was currently the Year of Blank Sun. 

Modern _in_door-habitat proles thought the sun remained the same, day-in and day-out, year after year. Most people knew that stars were born and all stars eventually die, either in little white _blip_s or huge time-altering explosions, but what of their life cycles? Surely there was more to a star than hello and good-bye. 

The friendly neighborhood Sun actually had waxing and waning periods. Some were deeper and harsher than others; Cartman kept track. It had been 275 days without sunspots. He even double-checked with the international numbers out of Belgium. According to his data, two years ago the sun was spotless for 104 days out of 365. Two years before that it was zero days, and two years before that, zero days. 

Even skywatchers mistook the blank sun for boring. Sunspots were so exciting -- magnetic explosions punching planet-sized holes in the star’s surface, hemorrhaging X-rays and ultraviolet radiation -- but every 11 years it lapsed into silence. Sunspots dropped off. The magnetic field weakened and allowed violent, high-energy cosmic rays to collide with Earth. Particles propelled toward the solar system from age-old supernovae across the galaxy clashed with Earth's upper atmosphere -- it was your physical blast from the past. This year the planet was taking cosmic blast-waves like crazy; the whole planetary hood was on that whoop-de-whoop. Neutron monitors in Finland measured the ferocity of the rays daily and they were unusually strong this year, just shy of record-breaking -- 

Cartman connected an adapter to his smartphone, started up SkyQuest, selected a 20 mm eyepiece, and sat down to adjust his telescope. The collimation was shit. His primary mirror was grimy, and the tube was dented from when the whole rig fell down the stairs, but before he had a telescope with solar filters he had a pair of lousy binoculars that he used to reflect an image of the sun on his bedroom wall. And before _that_, well. You’d be amazed the things that occupy your mind in prison. Telescopes made out of paper plates, his memories like a flip-book with chunks of blank pages between mirror images of the sun on the cell wall --

The sky was like TV without commercials. Only a moron thought of space like insignificant shit -- insignificant shit much bigger than them, and a very long way off. The truth was, Cartman was looking at the smallest and deepest inner workings of the human body.

Suddenly the neighbors’ dogs erupted. Mr. and Mrs. Tarbottom lived together, but nobody believed they were married. They kept two matted and bearded mongrels who only knew how to curse in dog language. Cartman could almost see them, flinging themselves into the windows in angry panic, white rings around their eyes, he always wondered -- who taught them to hate? 

Whoever set off the Tarbottom dogs made it to the front door. Keys turned in the lock. Cartman shut out sound. Reality was his perceptual playground. He looked at people like ant farms; it was fascinating for a _little_ while, to observe a thing with basic urges and a 24-hour lifespan -- but in the end, he was on another level. 

His therapist back in corrections said it was part of his _anhedonism_. A dysfunction in the reward center of his brain. It meant Cartman didn’t get pleasure from the same things most people did. He didn’t think that was _al_ways true. But then again, neither was the truth. 

“Fatass, hello -- I’m talking to you!” The ants didn’t generally address him directly. 

Stan Marsh hung on his doorframe. He hadn’t taken off his boots, either. He’d come running from somewhere. 

“Knock first.” Cartman thought of swapping his eyepiece for the 10 mm. Something a little stronger.

“There’s no door!”

Someone broke into the apartment last month and looted it. They were looking for something specific. They didn’t expect to find two tons of walking sleep-deprivation and several brutal lessons in failed anger management behind the last bedroom door.

“Functional fixedness, Stan,” he hummed. “Is remaining in a dark room with a fresh light bulb and a chair but no ladder.”

“I don’t get it.”

“_Stand_ on the chair, Stan.”

A defeated sigh. Then, a knock on the empty doorframe. “Look, I’m sorry to interrupt you in space, but we need a camera -- do you still have your mom’s old Sony?”

“It’s not _old_, it’s from 2004!”

“It’s old, dude.”

“Cameras are old! Get a fucking GoPro!”

“We’ve only got about seventy -- but we need something with more than 30 fps to do the slow-motion shots. Please? We’ll put you in the video credits.”

Cartman chuckled. “I don’t want my name on whatever sub-human monkey orgy you’re filming in _Anthropology_.”

“No! What! _No!_ I’m talking about skating! We’re shooting a video at the tracks right now -- ” 

“Oho -- hold up, are you telling me, Princess fuckin' _Phony_ doesn’t have a brand-name _drone_ and the Japanese military to film her eating pavement?”

“I, uh, accidentally cracked the lens.”

This startled a laugh out of him. Cartman turned away from his telescope. 

Stan pressed his palm to his forehead, his fingers like a nervous tiara. “I know, I know. This is only the second time I’ve been invited to a shoot, and I already effed up. Look, I know it's not important to you. Just, lend me the camera for the day?”

“I have to say, Stan. I didn’t know I was thirsty when you knocked, but the sight of sweat _lea_ping out of your pores at the prospect of total humiliation has really cheered me up.” Cartman started to turn back to the skies. _You_ try getting a fat dude off the television. “I’d love to help you redeem yourself to the royal shemale and indirectly participate in the theatrical faggotry, but I didn’t leave my head parked up my ass this morning. Now get out of my room.”

“_One_ day, dude. One afternoon -- you never even touch that camera!”

Cartman settled his eye back against the aperture. “One hundred and seventy-three hours of Liane having sex with strangers.” Stan interjected: “_Ugh! Dude!_” He adjusted the focus. “Sometimes I can sort of remember them -- I can remember which cartoon was on that night, or what I ate for dinner. _Spaghetti-Os._ I used to make up stories in my head to fit the sounds coming through the walls.”

“Please don’t tell me about the banana-men again,” Stan pleaded. “I just wanna borrow your camera.”

“It’s professional grade equipment, fool!” He snapped. “That thing costs thousands -- I’m not handing it over to Madam _Moon_shine and her band of clumsy tits!”

“If you want to flirt so bad, get your ass up, dig out the camera, and let’s go!”

Cartman turned and glowered at his roommate. Magnetic storms ripped holes in his exterior. 

“Look, man.” Stan sighed. “We only rented the mini-bikes for the day, but if you come along one of them’s yours. Pat’s brother is back from Afghanistan, too -- he brought a Super Cub!”

Cartman chewed his thumbnail. “No way. What year?”

“It’s the C100,” he rushed. “Looks legit. Kenny was throwing it around the halfpipe when I left.”

“I’ll get the camera.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more soon  
_gruss vom krampus!_


End file.
